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Christian doctrine in the poetry of T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden: an investigation of the religious ideas of these writers in relation to modern sensibility
Horne, B. L.
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2 UNIVERSITY 0 F D P R H A M
Christian Oootrine in the poetry of
T. S. Bliot and V, H. Auden.
An investigation of the religions ideas of these writers
in relation to modern sensibility.
A thesis submitted by
BRIAN LAVRENCB: HORNE
for the Degree of
HASTER OF LBTTBRS
JULY 1967 2.
ABSTRACT OF THESIS
This thesis investigates the differing vays in
which the Christian religion finds expression in the
poetry of two moderns avowedly Christian, poets. The
disouoaion centres upon the ways in which the two
cardinal Christian dootrines - Incarnation and Atonement -
are apprehended» and ezeoines the distinctive relation
each poet bears to the religious sensibility of the
twentieth century. Auden's understanding of the Christian vision of life and his grasp, on the essential connection
between the fundamental doctrines prove, on close compara•
tive examination, to be fuller and surer than Bliot's.
The first two chapters deal with the relation between religious and artistic values * primarily in the nineteenth oenturys the background against which the
theological and poetic developments of the present century must be understood. The following three chapters
trace in Eliot's poetry his changing attitudes to man*s condition and his destiny. Because of a distinctive preoccupation with metaphysical problems of Time and
Reality, the Christian beliefs of the later poetry revolve around the single doctrine of the Incarnation by which Eternal and Temporal, Supernatural and Natural are 3.
united* Chapter Six briefly esaminea the plays, in vhioh
a largely unsuieoessful attempt is made at conveying the meaning of sin and atonement.
By oontraets Auden*s worki even in its early stages,
shows a ooneem with the Immediate human esperienee of
self-oontradiotion and guilt, oonflict and suffering.
Consequently his Christian faith is characterised by an emphasis on the transformation of this condition by the sacrificial act known as the Atonement. Nonetheless, the absolute interdependence of Atonement and Incarnation is clearly expressed, so that Auden's work, though frequently inferior, poetically, to Eliot*8, at times embodies the
Christian vision with a fullness that Eliot's never achieved.
The concluding chapter outlines current theological trends and the ways in which the two poets reflect the distinctive sensibility of the present century. COEJTBOTS
ABSTRACT m TMSSZS
A note on 'Qonsibility*
CHAPTER I Si^ificant aopeoto of tho 11 thoologicol and literary baoZsgrounii9 of tho ninotoonth OQifttury
GSAPTER ZI To Bo Eliot. Tho AmoriCQn 38 Qaohcround
GimPTER III T. So Qliot and tho 51 philooophical attitudoo of T. E. SSulmo
CliAPTBM M Eliot's Poetry. 68 (1) 1909 ° 1917. £. PoQPO 19S0
C5IAPTBR V Eliot'o Poetry. 102 (a) groGioents of an Ar;on
CHAPTER VI Eliot's Footry. 118 (3) Aoh Uodneodav and Cour Quartots
CHAPTER VIZ Eliot's Poetic Drama 163
CHAPTER VIZI Introduction to tho wor^ 209 of Uo ^o Audon 5.
Page
CHAPTER IS Auden's Poetry. 218 (l) Prom Poems 1930 to Another Time
OBAPTER Z Auden'a Poetry. 259 (2) New Year Letter and Per the Time Being
CaAPTBR XI Auden*8 Poetry. 293 (3) Prom The Age of Anxieti to About the House
CHAPTER XII The character of twentieth 3^7 century theology and the relation of Bliot*8 and Auden*s work to this pattern of religious sensibility
BIBLIOGRAPHY 389 6.
INTRODUCTION
A note on 'sensibility*
• •• I • , Before the attempt at examining the religious ideas of Eliot and Auden is made, it will be necessary to give a clear indication of what the word 'sensibility* is intended to convey throughout this study. It has become a difficult word to use, not merely because it has largely passed out of common speech, but because of the numerous and diverse associations with which it has become encrusted. Most standard English dictionaries allow for at least four interpretations, but only two will be employed here. These are the literal and obvious meanlngi
•power of sensation or perception* and the more literary and subtle« 'emotional coneeiousness*^. No use of
* sensibility* which disregarded the literal sense could be accepted as legitimate, but it is the second defini• tion that, with slight modifications, will receive the stronger emphasis. Clodification is required because the phirase 'emotional consciousness' suggests primarily the
(l) Tfao Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 22 (l933) 7. state of a single individual human being. Throughout this study the word's application will be extended to cover the feielings and perceptions of a whole collection of individuals - as in the expression 'modern sensibility'^. That such a thing as a 'modem' sensibility, particularly in religious matters, actually exists has yet to be established, the concern at the moment is with grammatical legitimacy. This can hardly be denied as long as similar analogical extensions ('belief, 'feeling', 'outlook* - all words with an initially personal and individual frame of reference) can be allowed.
Consequently 'sensibility* will be used to denote not merely the power or ability to feel and perceive, but already-constituted structures of feeling and perception.
It will have two closely-connected levels of meaning and will operate in much the same way as the word 'conscience* operates. In the case of 'conscience' the commonly- accepted modem definition as 'the faculty or principle which pronounces upon the moral quality of ones motives • • 2 or actions' barely hints at an ambivalence which is taken (1) This is not an idiosyncratic use. T.S. Eliot makes use of a similar 'extension* in his essay Culture Forces in the Human Order. See Prospect for Christendom edited by Haurioe B. Reckitt. (2) A New English Dictionary. Vol. VIII (l91^) 8. for granted, tloral theologians discern two elements in every activity which involves conscience. There is, first, the possession of a whole system of beliefs and principles without which no moral Judgment can be made,
(SYlRDERESlis) and, secondly, the power to make decisions by applying general principles in particular cases
(CONSCIBNTIA)o Similarly 'sensibility' can be seen to consist of both the structures of thought and feeling and the ability to think and feel and perceive. The constant interaction between the two levels is taken for granted.
Perhaps the implications will become clearer by example than by definition. Ifhen, in a somewhat ungraramatical footnote to his essay Religion and the Muses.
David Jones writes that
A painting by someone of the English Pre-Raphaelites has not the same 'look' as a painting by those Italians before Raphael which the Pre-Raphaelites sought to emulate1 he is remarking on a change in cultural 'sensibility*. No amount of technical imitation on the part of Rosetti or
Uolman Hunt could produce the same effect as paintings by
Ohirlandaio or Perugiho because the artists could not escape the ways of thinking and feeling peculiar to their own ages. Whatever the Victorian may have believed about the Kiddle Ages, the fact remains that fifteenth century
(l). Epoch and Artist, p. lOk n< 9.
Italy was a far cry from nineteenth century England, and the religion of the Victorian world was utterly different, and, in some respects, opposed to that of pre-Roformation
Europe0 In this particular case, it is in the expression of a specifically religious sensibility that the pre-
Raphaelites differ radically from the late Hedieval painters whose style they so much admired.
Ttte most celebrated use of the word 'sensibility* in the twentieth century is probably to be found in T.S.
Eliot's phrase .'dissociation of sensibility*^. It might be argued that Eliot is referring to the simple 'power of perception', but an earlier phrase in the same essay makes-it dear that he is not. a thou^t to Donne was an experience g it modified hie sensibility^.
The Modification' of the Sensibility is analogous to the
'education* of the conscience in which the existing body of beliefs is altered. Eliot is thus referring not merely to Donne's capacity to feel and thinks to an organ or faoultyp but also to his 'outlook's the structure of his thoughts and feelings, ^en he wishes to denote the former he uses the phrase 'mechanism of sensibility'*'.
(1) 'The Metaphysical Poets'. Seioeted Bssava. p. 288i
(2) Ibid., p. 287«
(3) Ibid,, p. 2870 10.
£2odern religious sensibility is then to be under• stood as a phrase which refers to the peculiar structures of thought and feeling which govern the religious attitudes, of men primarily in the twentieth century.
And it is to these structures whose outlines have been formed by the eomplicatod interaction of the continuing life and te&nhlns of the Christian Church and the particular historical oiircumstanoes of the century, that the dominant Christian themes in the poetry of Bliot and
Andeh vill be. related. 11.
CHAPTER I
Slqnlfiaant aspects of the theological and
.literary backfiround of the nineteenth century.
In the symposium produced in 19^8 to honour T. S.
Bliot on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday^, the contributors are unanimous in claiming for him the distinction of a man whose work revitalised the poetic tradition and changed the course of English literature.
Even Lawrence Ourrell, in his evasive and ironical little poem Anniversary, pays tribute to Eliot*s unique gifts in the handling of the English language
Poetry, science of intimacies. In you his early roots drove through The barbarian oompost of our English To sound new veins and marbled all his views. Through and through like an old black ledger . The.contributors to the symposium are, almost without exception, laudatory, but doeplte this fact, when it comes to evaluating Eliot*s technical accomplishments and the achievements of his early years, they still reflect general critical opinion. Even those critics hostile to the poet seldom deny the profound effect he has had on
(1) T.S. Eliot« A Symposium. (l9^8) compiled by R« Inarch and Tambimuttu (2) Symposium, p. 88. 12.
English poetry by his virtual 're-«working' of poetic diotion. No other modem poet writing in English has discovered modes of expression which can claim the double distinction of being both so perfectly fitted to the expression of his own attitudes and so far-reaching in their effect on the writings of his younger contemporaries^.
In praising Eliot for accomplishing a technical revolution these critics are doing little more than echo the Judgments of R. Leavls and Edmund Ifilson whose books New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) and Axel's
Castle (1931) first brought this revolution to the recognition of the public. Though many might deplore the nature of the achievement, none can deny that it took place, and however much Leavis's comments on the
'debilitated* tradition of the nineteenth century may be disliked0 the remarks he made about the poetry of Poems
1909-1925 still have validity after over thirty years
.•.9 Prufrock, the earliest section, which is dated 1917p itself constitutes an important event in the history of English poetry. Th@ title poem, The Love Song of J. Alfa-ed Prufrock. which is presented at the beginning of Poems 1909-1925. represents a complete break with the nineteenth century tradition, and a new start^.
(1) of. Herman Nicholson's remarks in the same volume "The result was that in these earlier poems he did not so much create a poetic diction as make it possible for other poets to create thedra'* (p. 233) (2) New Bearings in English Poetry. p, 75. 13.
Bliot himself has described the way in which he reacted to the poetio diction in the nineteenth century, and in the course of his essay on Swinburne in 1920, made certain remarks about diction which give a clear indication of what he imagined himself to be doing in the early poems
Language in a healthy state presents the object, is so close to the object that the two are identified. They are identified in the verse of Swinburne solely because the object has ceased to exist, because the laeaning is merely the hallucination of meaning, bocause language, uprooted, has adapted itself to an independent life of 'atmospheric nourishment^.
Uhjat Eliot saw as important was a language which *... is struggling to digest and express now objects, new groups 2 • of Objects, now feelings, nov aspects ....* . Before poetry could become significant in the lives of men, poets would have to create a diction which would have some real and inevitable connection with the world of
*obJeots* as it is experienced. The poet*s task was not one of providing man with a new world made cut of words, but one of providing them with words by which they could identify the *obJects* of the world which they had already experienced, but only half-understood. Poetry was to be not so much a *criticism of life* as a means (1) Swinburne as Poet. Selected Essays, p. 327< (2) Ibid. of identification. It seemed to Eliot that the literary
tradition of tho nineteenth century to which he was heir
had lost sight of this and so he turned for instruction
to the poetry of earlier centuries and other languages.
In the introduetion to the Selected Poems Ezra Pound he
tells us that the 'forms' in which he chose to write at
the time of the composition of Pmfrock. were '.... drawn
directly from the study of Laforgue together with later Eliaabethan drama*^.
But it would bo entirely mistaken to imagine that
Eliot's reaction to his immediate literary forbears can be discussed only at the level of technique, and indeed
Eliot's technical aohievements are only of interest in this study in so far as they are symptoina;tic of the
'revolutionary' attitudes and beliefs which informed his work in the first two decades of this century. No distinction between 'form' and 'contact' in his poetry «-^ X is ever satisfactory, and his essays on Swinbume and 2 Tennyson , though not directly related to his own poetry, make it obvious that he rejected the diction provided by the Victorians, net because he considered his predecessors to be bad technicians, but because it was impossible to (1) Esra Pounds Selected Poems, p. 8. (2) Swinbume as Poet. Selected Baaava. pp. 323-327* In Memoriam. Selected Essays, pp. 328-338. 15.
pour new wine into old bottles. He came thus to adopt
symbolist and late-Eliaabethah techniques, not for the
purpose of displaying technical dexterity, but for the
purpose of discovering new forms which could give adequate
expression to the new content. The reaction was thus not
merely the reaction of a man who had different ideas
from those of his predeoessoro about the details of
composition but th® roaotion of one who possessed
different spiritual values. The sensibility of
T.So Eliot was obviously different from that of the
Viotorians and the Aesthetes and, more significantly,
the sensibility of the world in and for which he was
writing had itself changed radically since the close of
the century, ^e alteration of the poetic tradition
consisted of much more than the production of a now and
startling style, it involved the embodiment of a new
sensibility.
, This was recognised as early as 1917 by E,tl, S'orster,
who writing in 1928 of his initial acquaintance with
Eliot*s work said Hero was a protest, and a feeble one, and the more congenial for being feeble. Per what, in that world of gigantic horror, was tolerable except the slighter gestures of dissent? HO is difficult because he has seen something terrible ^y italics/, end (underestimating, I . think, the general decency of his audience) has declined to say oo plainly^.
(l) Abingey Harvest, pp. 107 and 113< 16.
In spite of the indirect and elliptical style, Eliot had given Forster at least, a clear apprehension of what lay at the heart of his Creative activity. The vision which caused his spiritual rebellion and poetic revolu• tion was the 'sight of something terrible'; a quasi- apooalyptio visions 'Armadillo-Armagedden'.
Noiie of these observations is new. Every commentator on Eliot's poems readily acknowledges that new values and attitudes go hand in hand with new techniques and the use of religious terminology has become common-place in any criticism of his works
The shallow progressive philosophies both religious and secular of our parents' generation, sought to eliminate evil from the world. ^« Eliot's vision of hell , restored a necessary dimension to our universe .
What is seldom recognised is the fact that in the field of technical theology the same 'necessary dimension' was being restored at precisely the same time, and that the change Eliot wrought in the poetic tradition not merely parallels, but is linked ideologically, with the chemge in the religious sensibility of much of the Uestem world.
He was wont to characterise his beliefs and practises as a reaction to Romanticism and Liberalism, and, freely employed the theological terms 'heresy' and 'orthodoxy'
(l) Kathleen Raine. 'The Poet of Our Time*. Symposium P» 79« 17. in lltdrasy debateo Slallarly the idoaa of the greatest and most influential Protestant theologians of this century arose out of a profound dissatisfaction t7ith, what is technioally known as 'theological liberalieo*, and earned for themselves the title of 'neo-orthodos" theologians e At the centre of tho change in theological outlook lies a re-thinking of the Christian doctrine of mans and long before his baptism into the Christian Church^ v«b find Sliot<'e dissatisfaction!^ with the popular spiritual values of the nineteenth century revolving around the pivotal point of belief about the true nature of man.
Liberalismt like romantici8m« is a word with so many connotations that no single definition could evor satisfy more than a handful of people« and Eliot has been accused of using both of these words in an idiosyncratic way. But however unsatisfactory his prose definitions may be, it can hardly be denied that the beliefs which inform nearly all of his poems can justifiably be described as intellectual and emotional reactions to ideas and beliefs of the nineteenth century which, with more than mere historical aoouracys ean be called romantic and liberal. In the introduction to his book Aicel'a Castle. Bdfflund tfilson echoes faintly the remarks of T.S. Mtilme by
(1) In 1927. 18. calling RomantiolsiQ 'a revolt of the Individual• • and quotes A.H. Uhitehead as saying that Romantieism gre^r in reaction to the mechanistic ideas of the eighteenth centuryo l/ilsong oonsequentlyp places William Slake among the first Romantics and this 'placing* of Blake has never seriously been challenged. fJithin the framet^ork of an historical review of literature this is unezcep" tionabloi but it is important to seot in a larger perspective that Romanticism and the Romantic -Movement can also be regarded as the late and final flowering of ideas and beliefs that wore being heralded four hundred years earlier in a series of interconnected artistic and intellectual phenomena which are lumped together under the heading the Renaissance B and that the theological and literary reaction to Romanticism involves, in certain aspects, a return to the consideration of issues common in the Medieval world.
Zt is easy to exaggerate the suddenness of the Renaissance, but an unwillingness to paint the historical scene in sharp colours should not prevent us from recognising the importance of the change which came over European sensibility in the fifteenth and sistoenth centuries. In many ways the thought of the Christian Church for the first fourteen centuries of its esistence
(l) Aael's Castle, pp. 9-10. 19.
shows a greater affinity with that of the ancient classical world than it does with the modern era. Despite the fact that it proclaimed the Incarnation of the Creator of the Universe and a gospel whereby man was redeemed from sin and given the promise of eternal life, it took for granted the validity of thou^t«form8 inherited from the ancient world and never seriously questioned them until the acientifio and humanistic attitudes of the fifteenth century presented their challenge. The extant to which Thomas Aquinas was able to use, and build upon, the philosophical categories of Aristotle is only a small indication of the organic link which existed between classical and medieval thought^. St. Ihoraas makes it perfectly clear that a great deal more is involved in the notion of the Christian God than the Aristctelean concept of the •unmoved mover*, but he employs the emcient philosopher*8 principle of 'movement* extensively, and throughout his work a fundamentally classical, though thoroughly re-interpreted concept of the order of creation is emphasisedo The cosmos, in £3edieval thought, is essentially static - a series of concentric circles beyond
(l) of. Stienne Gilson. The History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages Even in his theology, which he could not borrow from Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas had accepted the general notion of science, the empiricism and the intellec- tualism of the Philosopher, (pp. 381-382) 20.
which stretched the unbounded Bmpyreum which was the dwelling place of God. 'She Universe was divided into various orders and each order occupied its appointed placeo At the summit of.the natural order stood man, but beyond him, and between him and God, otretohod the complicated hierarchy of tho angelic host^. actual 'geography* of this conception of creation was of comparatively little importanceo Wi&t wao of importance, was the theology it espreesedi that however visualised, it should symbolise the belief in the order and security of a life lived under the ultimate dominion of God. The visions of Oante in The Pivine Ccmedv and Giotto in his paintings might exhibit 'geographical* peculiarities of their own, but both embody their' adherence to a belief in the divine baarmony and order of all created life founded upon the transcendental stiblimity of the uncreated God
7et, as a wheel moves smoothly, free from Jars Uy will and my desire were turned by lovo, 2 Tho love that moves the sun and the other stars . IThen this particular relation between classical and ESedieval attitudes is grasped, it becomes apparent why TSLiot is able to call himself both Classical and Catholic
(1) of. Summa Centra Gentiles. Dk. SZZ, Ch, IDSl'-tKlZ (2) The Pivine Comedy. Paradise. Canto ISSSLIZZ 21.
without Self-contradiction. Dismayed by the disorder and chaos of the contemporary world, he returns to the search for pattern and order again and again, not only in his poetry, but in the critical prose, and, more obviously still, in his plays. The figure of a Medieval Archbishop was found to be a singularly appropriate peg upon which to hang his reflections on his own attempts at discovering a key to the apparently disorganised series of events which constituted personal life and human history. For W.H. Auden, by contrast, this problem is a peripheral one. Philosophically speaking, Auden virtually leaps over the ten medieval centuries stretching between St. Augustine and Montaigne, and is far more concerned with the psychological problems involved in individual human ehoioes and actions than with the pattern into which such choices and actions ultimately fit.
In the Medieval scheme of things, man occupied his proper place in the divine order of creation - a relatively lowly one. Though standing at the peak of the natural world, he was limited in his capacities and bound by his sin, destined for perfection and glory only by the loving grace of God operative in the sacrifice of Christ. His world was one of quasi-platonic forms and symbols pointing to the Divine rather than one of vital energy and constant change. Against beliefs such as these 22.
the men of the Renaissanoe began a rebellion which blossomed into Romanticism and faded into Liberalism. St did not begin as, or was ever consciously, a rebellion against the Christian faith but it had as its base an unspoken assumption about the nature of man that led to conflict with the Church and the setting-up of rival religions.
It is beyond the scope of this study to esamine the way in which belief about man*s nature and abilities developed in the period between the first movements of the Renaissance and the nineteenth century, but it is possible to see that the *apollonian* works of tSiohelangolo in which, as Kenneth Clark remarks, despite the devout personal orthodosy of the artist, man desires to boeome more than man and aspires to bo a God^, stand at the. inception of a process which, having shed tSue grace and dignity of true humanism, culminates in the Superman of ?riederioh Metssche and the optimistic anthropoeentrism of theological liberalism. Stelief in Original Sin is necessarily abandoned along the line, and, as T.S. Hulme tirelessly emphasised^ the order of the world is turned upsid® down, for perfectibility is placed, where it ought not to be • on the human level. Against attitudes like
(l) cfo Kenneth Clark, *The Young taiohelangelo*. Penfiuiq Bojal^ of t^e ^l^p^ipsance, p. 105. 23. thesis.Eliot, filulme and the neo-orthodox theologians were to set their faces in the second and third decades of the present century. The Church, as an infallible institution and the last court of appeal in religious controversy, had been abandoned by the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century. Zn doing so, they unwittingly planted the seeds of a growth they would hardly have approved of had they been able to witness it - Liberal Protestantism. Infallible Scriptures, in their scheme, replaced the Church, but, in practice, those do not work nearly so well as authoritative instruments. The written word can always admit of the widest possible interpretation, and as the centuries passed and divergences multiplied the Sible, as such, became less and less important as the inviolable channel of God*8 Truth and Revelation. Thongh iip service was always paid to Scripture, the last court of appeal oiame to rest, naturally, in the individual interpreter. Liberalism, as a movement in theology, begins to separate itself from its predecessors of the el^teenth century. Deism, Latitudinarianism and Puritanism, in the writings, of Priedrich Schleiermaeher in Germany b Taking up the anti-dogmatic attitudes of his eighteenth- century forbears he not only inveighs against the rigid 2k.
formulations of belief, but replaces Reason with Gefflhl as the arbiter in all matters of religion. (There is no esact English equivalent of this word - its meaning lies somewhere between *experience* and 'feeling*). The parallels with Romantic literature are obvious. The Christian revelation far from being something given, becomes little more than the symbol of collective man's aspirations. Creeds, formularies, and the Bible itself are misleading. Hhat is of supreme importance is the individual's personal esperienee and eventual self- realisation.
Orthodox Christian dogmatists had held that the content of the Christian faith is a doctrine given in revelation. Schleiermacher held that it is a conscipusness inspired primarily by the personality of Jesue^. Thou^ he uses the categories of sin, grace, and redemp• tion in discussion, it is clear that religion is something rooted in the perceptibility of the individuals a man- centred thing, and that the moral identification of the individual Christian with the man Jesus Christ is of the essence of salvation. Xt is perhaps in his Christo- logy that Schleieraacher's presuppositions become most evident. Christ is not seen as the Pivine Logos, the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, (the doctrine of
(1) Edward C. Eloore. History of Christian Thought since Sarit. p. 81. 25.
the Trinity is given a rather perfunctory glance in a chapter at the end of his book. Per phristlicho Glaube) but as the perfect Man, the moral and spiritual ideal, the one in whom complete God-consciousness is finally attained. He is the revelation of the Father, not because He is the Incarnate Son, but because His apprehension of the Father*s will is perfect. Grace becomes, in consequence, not so much the loving act of the Creator to sinful creatures in distress, as the name which is used to describe the psyohologieal effect resulting from the free identification of those creatures with the embodiment (Jesus Christ) of their highest human aspirations.
It has been necessary to pause briefly on the ideas of Sohleiormaeher because his influence on the religious sensibility of Protestant Europe (and England must be included In this generalisation) is a formative one and extends far beyond the years of his own life and into the twentieth century. Hie treatment of the Person of Christ, his opposition to dogmatic formulation, his soft-pedalling of the doctrine of Original Sin, and his antl-supomaturalism accorded very well with the Romantic spirit and the feelings of human self-sufficiency engendered by increasing material prosperity and considerable technological advance. 26.
^e underlying assumptions of Sohleiermacher's attitude vave brought to the surface and made esplieit in the work of his younger contemporary and fellow- countrjrman Albrecht Ritschl. Ritschl's subjectivism surpasses anything that Schleiermacher advocated. In his thou^t, God, as an object of devotion and love is practically excluded'^, and statements about God become value-Judgements about the state of the individual's relation with the world. Original Sin is discounted, mystical apprehension denounced, and supreme value is placed on\ ethical conduct. Kenneth Scott Latourette has said of Ritschli He both helped to shape and represented much of the mind of what might be called liberal or progressive Protestantism, not only in Germany but also outside Germany. It was a practical mind, empirical, on the whole hope• ful, intent on realising the gingdom of God on earth. It was in accord with the optimism and confidence in progresa which oharaotoriaed the Ifestem world in the nineteenth century, especially as that century moved on to its abrupt close in the tragic summer of 191'^^<> The attempt at the realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth - a persistent note in Liberal-Protestant
(1) It is interesting to contrast with these beliefs Eliot's own attitude to those who wore vague about the objects of their belief, cf• The sermon preached by V'.A. Pemant at the Requiem High ^ass for T.S. Eliot at St. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road. Reprinted in Frontier. July 1963. (2) Christianity in a Revolutionary Afie. Vol. II. pp. 26-27. 27. religion - can be regarded as the theological counterpart of the secular belief in Progress. ]aloth spring out of the Rooantlc conception of the infinite possibilities of human iraprovepont and place ultimate perfection on the natural level. Aided by refined techniques of archaeo• logical investigation and textual scrutiny, the scholars gradually eliminated the awkward transcendental and apocalyptic elements of the Christian gospel, and a radiceil deeonstration of the Romantic * intoxication with the inner life^ oan be found in the field of Biblical theology. The conjunction of the Higher Critical attitude towards the Scriptures and the Romantic idealisa• tion of man produced the figure of the Historical Jesus.
Zn 1833, David Strauss, a disciple of both Hegel and Schleiermaoher, published his book Das Lebon Jesn. All supernatural aspects of the Divine Person are discarded as inauthentio and unnocossary. The book lo a biography and Christ is first and foremost the historical person from £?asareth who lived the ideal human life. Zt is the re* creation of a horo, not an incarnate God. Strauss*8 book was followed by Joseph Ernest RenQn*8 picture of the charming Galilean preacher in Vie de Jesus (l862). George Eliot was profoundly moved by these studies in the life of Jesus and translated them into English, between them these two books set the pattern for the thousands of more 28. popular and less scholarly accounts of the life of the founder of the Christian religion which appeared in the half-century that followed. All were attempts at recon• structing the events of the historioal esistence on the belief that, as a man, Jesus Christ embodied all that was noblest and best in human nature, and that He provided the model for all social and moral behaviour.
These studies went a long way to form tho religious sensibility of the second half of the nineteenth century and Swinburne^s famous lines from Hymn to Proserpine Thou hast conquered, 0 pale Galileani The world has grown grey with thy breath express a revulsion from the kind of Christ who made his appearance in the immensely popular painting by Holman Hunt The Light of The Tforld. But it was not until the turn of the century that the 'gentle Jesus* image began to lose power. The forceful scholarly reaction was characterised by Albert Schweitzer in 1901i Read through the * lives of Jesus* since the sixties and behold what they have made of the imperial words of Our Lord, what a weak and ambiguous sense they have put upon his peremptory, other-worldly requisitions, in order that he might not clash with our ideals of civilisation and his other-worldliness might be brought to terms with cue this-worldliness. Iteny of his greatest words one finds lying in a comer, a heap of discharged spring-bolts. 29.
Ve make Jesus speak with our time smother language than that which passed his lips^. Heina Zahmt in his critique of the whole movement makes the fundamental connection between the Romantic and pseudo-Romantic ideas and the quest for the Historical Jesus clear when he says The image of the Historical Jesus which was now being developed was not in fact simply drawn from :the historical sources. Zt was largely goverhed by the presuppositions . entertained by the writers themselves .*•,.. The inevitable consequence was the develoipment of a vast number of different pictures of Jesus, almost ail of which at closer inspection prove to be deteriained by the neo-humanist myth of the nineteenth century ...... Hence in liberal theology Jesus became a moral exemplar and a religious teacher, euid the Kingdom of God which he proclaimed became an inner kingdom of values, of the Good, the True and the Beautiful, a timeless ideal2;i This * inner kingdom of values' is, significantly, precisely the 'kingdom' which Matthew Arnold proclaimed in his book Literature and Dogma when it appeared fourteen years after La Vie de Jesus. Matthew Arnold severs religion's connection with propositions about the Godhead of the Eternal Son^, and places it firmly in the realm of ethical behaviour. Zt is described as 'a binding to righteousness' cmd a little later as 'morality touched by
(1) The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, transl. Walter Lowrie, p. 31. (2) The Historical Jesus, transl. J.S. Bowden, pp. 48-^9. (3) Literature and Dogma, p. 20. 30.
emotion*^. As in the works of Schlelermacher, Ritschl, Strauss and Renan (in his book on Arnold, Trilling mentions the connection between Soheierraaoher and Arnold but only briefly), Jesus becomes the epitome of all the author believes to be good and beautiful in human life. So Arnold, like the others, tends to create a God in his own image - one who represents the combination of his own individual religious sensibility and that of Victorian England.
And the infinite of the religion of Jesus - Its Immense capacity for ceaseless progress and farther development, lies principally, perhaps, in the line of extricating more and more his SY^eet reasonableness, and applying it to his method and secret^. Arnold might perceive and lament the poverty and ugliness of contemporary life, as in The Scholar Gypsy, and also express a sense of despair and desolation, as in Pover Beach, but it is clear that he is typical of his age In offering a solution which is 'aesthetic* rather than 'rellgloue*. Sweetness and light for him are the products of moral behaviour rather than religious belief. God is postulated, in Arnold*s * system* not because He Is a metaphysical necessity^ but because Me acts as an 3 • absolute guarantee of the aesthetic life •
(1) Literature and Pogma. pp. 20-21. (2) Ibid., p. 395. (3) cf. Lionel Trilling; Matthew Arnold. Ch. XI. 31.
Zt is unfair, of course, to take Matthew Arnold as the altogether typical representative of the Victorian religious sensibility - he cannot be called a convinced churchman, and evinces little of the gloom and harshness which characterised a great deal of Evangelical piety - but he does display certain typical aspects of it. The emphasis upon morality, the belief in Christ as a supreme moral and spiritual example, the rejection of dogma, and the belief In a progression towards the good life 8 all these are characteristic attitudes in nineteenth century English religion. Supernatural!sm is excluded (in catechetical classes of the period, the miracle-stories of the Gospels were invariably explained away) and the emphasis falls heavily upon the attainment of moral perfection. Zn his essay on Arnold and Pater, T.S. Eliot remarks that the former is '.... at least a forerunner of what is now called Humanism*^. The deification of man turned within a century into a process of the humanisa- tlon, and finally in consequence, the elimination, of God.
There can be little doubt that in England and America, in the latter half of the nineteenth-century - the Immediate background to the work of T.S. Eliot, anthropo- centrism reached its climax. Zn 1861, J.S. Mill produced
(l) Selected Essays, p. ^3^. 32.
his most influential book Utilitarianism which placed the satisfaction of human desires on the human and natural level^. In I867 the blologlcal-sooial theories of Sari Marx appeared in the first volume of Pas Kapltal. and earlier in 1859* Charles Parwin had written on the last page of his Origin of the Species Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfectlon2. Whether or hot men actually understood what Oarwln and other, evolutionists MQT@ propounding, or whether they believed in a process of *natural selection*, is difficult to Judge. IThat was communicated was a spirit of optlmisn and even complacency about the movements of the universe and the state of human affairs. And it is in this period that the * shallow, progressive philosophies* of which Kathleen Ralne speaks, set in. They are shallow because they possess a mechanical, unimaginative dimension which is foreign to the spirit of Romanticism. The belief in the perfectibility of man is still in evidence, but It is no longer expressed with the vitality and excitement of
(1) Compare the *pleasure principle* of J.S. P2111 with Thomas Aquinas* assertion that happiness is the result of the contemplation of God. Sumiaa Contra Gentiles. Bk. III. Ch. SS3EV1I. (2) Origin of the Species, p. k62» 33.
the Romantics <- it has become mundanOf almost a truism. No longer is there the sense of man's boundless potentialities{. of his capacity for touching *the infiniteHe has become» under the illuminations of scientific discovery and technological advance, little more than a part of the vorld vhlch the Romantics sat? him transcending. In a tjorld which has generally given itself over to a belief in material progress, the religious dimension in English poetry, completely vanishes, and the Romantic spirit is dissipated into a heartiness and self-satisfaction* Formal religious affirmations are of course still made, but they are either echoes of an outworn poetical tradition or, if orthodox, little deferential bo«8 to a not altogether-unagreeable historical survival.
Tennyson provides an admirable example of the refined Victorian religious sensibility. At his best he is never as trite in his vrritings, or as superficial as his minor contemporaries, and in In Memoriam he tries to face the problem of suffering and the personal knottledge of despair. But the moods of resentment and bitterness are quickly brushed aside to make room for the traditional appearances of confidence and security. In the sequence beginning
(l) of. James Benziger, Images of Eternity. p. ^1. 3^.
Ring out wild bells there is a reference to Christ in the final stanza but the iraage t^as little to do with the real meaning of the Xncamationo The subject of Tennyson's contemplation is the Liberal Protestant concept of the realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth and ..Christ provides a convenient symbol for the Victorian ideal of the improved manb Although the poem appeared nine years before The Origin of the Species, it is clear that evolu• tionary theories hiad reached Tennyson and interested him, for he places the human race in the evolutionary pattern and sees him destined for still higher development of a spiritual and moral kind^, and his perception of a Nature *red in tooth and claw* can hardly be Interpreted as a poetic understanding of the Christian doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin.
In the fifth volume of his work Religions Trends In English Poetry. H.K. PairchiId paints a dreary picture of 2 Victorian religion and proceeds to demonstrate some of the ways in which it was reflected in the poetry of the period. (Zt is Interesting to note, in passing, that certain aspects like the harsh application of rigid moral precepts, the uncompromising Sabbatarianism and the atmosphere of gloomy oppressiveness which pervaded most (1) In Memoriam. CSIS. (2) Religious Trends in English Poetry. Vol. V, p. 6. 35.
Evangelical and some Catholic religion, make hardly any appearance in the poetry of the age. This picture is left to the novelists to draw). Even if we find Pair- child's attitude to the nineteenth century unsatisfactory, it can hardly be denied that the Victorian scene does present a religious sensibility in an advanced state of decay* The Tractarian revival of Catholic doctrine and practice had not extended beyond the limits of a few ecclesiastics and their followers by the last decade of the century and Wordsworth provides an admirable example of the extent to which even men of great sensitivity can remain oblivious of the important religious issues over which men of their closest acquaintance were struggling^.
Those who did attempt overt orthodox expression of the Christian faith generally produced verse which lacked both emotional conviction and spiritual vitality. The single exception is Gerard Maniey Hopkins whose case is so unusual that it requires a detailed examination impossible in a survey as general as this. The religious poetry of the period, even in the work of major authors like Tennyson and Browning, shows either a tendency to quasi-pantheistic humanism, or a tendency to string together well-worn cliches - conceptual and devotional
(l) His closest associates were members of the Hackney Phalanx - a reforming party of High Churchmen in the first half of the nineteenth century. 36.
statements verified and organised in arbitrary ways (j.H. Newman, John Seble, J.M. Neale) and draped in Imagery which has little or no organic connection with the beliefs which form the intellectual or emotional substance of the poem (Tennyson, Christina Rosetti, Francis Thompson). W.Ho Auden and N.H. Pearson remark of the period The poets preach a religion in which the values and even the cult are to remain Christian but the Christian dogmas are to be regarded as myth, that is, poetic truth^. The cult certainly remained but it is doubtful whether the poets 'preached* values which can be called Christian. Nor were the poets the only artists who 'preached* this kind of religion, and the paintings of the pre-Raphaelites provide an interesting parallel. The conscious and deliberate attempts to escape the dingy products of nineteenth-century religious art resulted, not in a vigorous expression of new spiritual values and insights, but in an obvious retreat into a wOrld of superficial prettlness in which the religious sensibility of the age is all too obvious. The traditional trappings of Christianity (the cult) are much in evidence but through the conventional sjrmbolisra aiid the bright definition there emerges, more obviously than ever before, the picture of a distinctly human, sweetly reasonable, Christ the deified man.
(l) Poets of the English Language. Vol. V, p. XX. 37.
it could not have been apparent at the time, but it is clear to us, a hundred years later, that the extent to which the poetry and art of the period reflected the state of Victorian religion was far-reaching. Beneath the outward show of doctrinal orthodoxy and traditional symbolism, the age seems largely to have abandoned the essential dogmatic assertions of the historic faith in favour of a belief in the maintenance of social and moral standards with an eye to the improvement and possible perfection of the human race.
And this attitude proved to be extraordinarily tenacious, for it was not until the onset of the First World War that the progressive philosophies began to crumble and the religious sensibility to change. No^s of disaffection and disillusion had been sounded in poetloa,l and theologioal writing long before 191^» but it was a few years later, that, two volumes were published which struck fatal blows at nineteenth-century humanism and liberalism. T.S. Eliot*s Prufrook and Other Observa• tions, and Karl Barth's commentary on St^ Paul's Epistle to the Romans published in 1917 and 1918 respectively* Bach in its own way denounced the 'shallow progressive philosophies' of the preeeding decades, and each had a vision of hell and damnation which restored the 'necessary dimension to our universe'. 38.
CHAPTER II
T.S. Eliot. The American Background
!^at has been outlined so far, is the religious and cultural temper of nineteenth century England with brief iaention of the ways ' in which Continental Protestant theology influenced the religious sensibility. But Eliot was bom and brought up in the United States of America, and, although deeply aware of and affected by the English and European cultural situation, he was heir to ways of thinking, feeling and believing that show marked differences fron both the English and European Protestant sensibility.
The strict Calvinism of the original New England thebdracies gradually gave way under the political and intellectual pressures of the eighteenth century, and although Puritanism continued to exercise an influence on the manners and morals of the American people, traditional theological attitudes underwent radical changes in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Edward Mooire maintains that theology altered along *the same general lines as we have seen in Sehlelerraachor and 39.
Campbell'^9 but this is only half-true. The similarities are obvious but there are numerous and important ways in which the religious sensibility of the United States is unique. The combination of eighteenth century deism and the vital upsurge of the Romantic spirit combined to produce, not Liberal Protestantism, but, first Vnitarianism and, soon after, its off-spring Transoendentalism.
American Uhitarlanism dates from the schism of the New England Congregational Churches in 1819* during which Williaim Sllery Ohanning allied himself with the anti- Calvinists and preached openly doctrines that were to form the basic tenets of the sect. Edmund Wilson and D.B.S. Eslaxwell, among others, have emphasised, and set great store by, the Calvlnist and Puritan strains in T*S. Eliot's heritage, but in fact it was in the heavily 1 intellectual atmosphere of Unitarianism that the poet was brought up (his Grandfather William Greenleaf Eliot had been a Unitarian minister and Chancellor of Washington University), and American Unitarianism presented an interesting spectacle in the nineteenth century. Zntelleotually and socially fastidious, it retained the manners and moral standards of Puritanism, but rejected unambiguously the theological concepts which had originally (1) History of Christian Thought Since Kant, p. 206, ho.
Informed the ethical actions of the Puritans. Channing and his followers turned their backs on the Christian doctrines of the Trinity« the Atonement and Original Sin, and there is an undisguised Romanticism in their asser• tions about the perfectibility of mane As.regards the person of Jesus Christ, the familiar Liberal Protestant Strain, with its emphasis upon perfect humanity and cioral exoeliehoe, makes its appearance here too. Elan's happiness does not ultimately depend upon the self-oblation of Christ, but the extent to which each individual emulates the example set by Christ and lives a life of self-controlled Integrity.
It was not long, however, before Vnitarianism produced a child of its own - and one which eventually had a deeper effect on the Intellectual and. cultural life of America Transcendentalism. In 1332, Ralph Ualdo Emerson, chafing even under the flexible framework of Unitarianism, resigned his ministerial duties in Boston, and in::'1835> delivered his famous lecture Th® Defects of Historical Christianity. It marked - in so far as any isolated event does mark the beginning of a 'movement* - the beginning of Transcendentalism in New England. Emerson and his associates came to be both more vigorous in their repudiation of the claim of church and dogma and more hi, ambitious in thoiz* -own claims for the potentialities of human nature, than any of their Unitarian forbears. Though centred on a somewhat 'academic' little gathering in Boston, the idoae spread quickly, and in the intro• duction to his aeleotod edition of Emerson's writings, F*J« Oarpeater offers a partial explanation by calling the progression from Calvinism to Transcendentalism a steady development from the 'theological' to the 'practical'* Calviniemt which dominated Efow England until late in the eigfateonth century, worshiped "God in three persons", eonoeiving of God somewhat anthropomorphically, and of Jesus as divine. Unitarianism, according to whose tenets Emerson was brought up, broke away from this oonooption of God, oontending that there could be but one God, and that Jesus had not been divine, but rather the perfect "Son of C3an". Transcendentalism carried the process to its logical ocnolusion, and denied the "personality" Oif God altogether, speaking of God as en impersonal force, which operated by moans of "the moral law"l. Carpenter is content to represent the development from Calvinism to Transcendentalism in terms of "changing conceptions of God", but Perry tliller suggests a different way of viewing the phenomenon ^re accurately, then, they may be defined in a somewhat wider perspective as children of the Puritan past who» having been emancipated
(l) Ralph Waldo Emerson. Rapresentativo Selections. pp. assiv-sxv. by UnitarianisQ from New England's original Calvinism, found a now religious expression in forms derived from romantic literature and from the philosophical idealism of Germany'*'.
F.Oa C3atthie8sen also emphasises the links with Romanti- olsffl and Idealism^, and it is important to take note of them, for It is evident that, despite their genuine religiosity, the American Transoendentalists* main concern was not the nature of God, but the nature of man and his relationship with bis.immediate physical environment. Th® repudiation of the doctrine of Original Sin was not a step in the direction of a clearer definition of God, but an attempt to liberate man from a sense of guilt and the shaokles of dogmatic religion, and to give a freedom to develop to the utmost his own basically good potentialities. This is the root of Transcendentalism (certainly of &aereon*s) and holds much in common with Romanticism( it branched afterwards into a new conception of God 9-9 the impersonal force, no longer transeondant but entirely immanent in the *created* world. The American cultural scene in the middle of the nineteenth century, however, contrasts strangely with the English because, at a time when, in Europe, the visionsiry Romantic spirit was faltering and beginning to settle down
(l) The Amerioan TranacendentalistSo p. T&, (3) American Renaisoance. ^ k3, into a mundane confidence about 'Progress', 'the American counterpart to the ebullient Romanticism of Europe'^ continued to express itself with real vigour, emd in the exalted manner of a new religion! a religion which proclaimed the natural divinity of every man. In the explicit pantheism of Emerson and, later, Walt Whitman, this process of divinisation reaches completion. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in' partieles a tSeantime within man is the soul of the wholes the wise silence{ the universal beauty, to which every part and ^ particle is equally related} the eternal 0I9E
Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul* The simplest person who in hie integrity worships God, becomes Godt yot tor ever and over the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable^. Uan is finally and completely released from church and dogma* The distinction between God and man is obliterated and oonaoquently the concept of God becomes meaningless. £3an is left to his own resources. In the scholar emd pragraatist, Emerson, the elimination of the object of worship resulted in the enunciation of a doctrine of Self-Reliance . But in others the religious instinct was
(1) Perry Miller* p. S* (2) The Over-Soul, jaspays* lat Series, p. Zlk, (3) Zbid.. p. 232* {k) Representative Selections, pp. 89-113* not so easily quelled or diverted, and in Uhitman, whose abandonment of ohureh and dogma was even more thorough than Emer8on*s, we find a deep-seated religious fervour, even in a poem as ego-centric as Song of Mvsolf. X celebrate myself* and sing myself. And what Z assume yon shall assume 2or every atom belonging to me as good belongs to yon.
X do not despise you priests, all time, the world over Uy faith is the greatest of faiths and the leaSl:^ of faiths. Enclosing worship ancient and modem and all between ancient and raodem^, Emerson's ideas seom to foreshadow a great many of the thoughts and attitudes of modem liberal America, and the influence of their passionate opposition to dogmatism, their pantheism and pseudo-religious humanism oan hardly be over-eetimated. Zt is only necessary to recall the laudatory phrases used by Slatthew Amold in his Diacouraes In America in 1883 to see how strong was Emerson's attraotion - even for the moat cultivated and fastidious minds of his own age • In his book American Renaissance. P.0» ]^atthie8son goes so far as to trace a direct line, through tJhitmab, from Emerson to the German philosopher
(1) fiomplete Poetry, pp- 26 and (2) 9Too cannot prise him too much or heed him too diligently.* Discourses in America, p. 206. ^3*
Friedrioh Metasoho^. But the doctrines of the Transcendentalists are vague, and because of their abhoi^ence of do^atism and ^ preoiso definition, it io often difficult to see where the movement begins and where it ends* and who it can legitimately bo said to include - a position which, doubtless, would have pleased Emerson and his followers. Zt is true that cultural historians and literary critics are all too prone to sake easy generalisations and to attach misleading labels to apparently disparate sets of phenomena - and Transcendentalism has suffered in this way • but it is nonetheless possible to speak of Trans• cendentalism as a Qovoment and estimate its influence. Despite the steady refusal oif the Transcendentalists to become another religious soct they could not avoid prejeoting a collection of attitudes and ideas that formed a coherent critique of human existence which oamo to be widely accepted both in Mew England and in the ospanding midoWest. Besides those men and women who met regularly in Boston - Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley - the outstanding literary figures of Uawthome, Longfellow and l^oreau had dose ties with Emerson and bis group, and many who had no diroot connection with the
(l) American Renaissance, p. 5^6, k6.
Transoendentalist Club found themselves in sympathy and agreement with the beliefs that it was expressing. Walt Whitman was one of these latter. Perry ESiller refers to him as the 'arch-Transcendentalist of ^ew 7ork'^, and it must be remembered that Emerson was one of the first to recognise the quality of Whitman's poetry and give his enthusiastic approval of it.
Although it peraeated the whole cultural life of Mew England, the Transcendontalist philosophy, like the Unitarians was one which established itself most easily in academic and intellectual circles, so that T.S. Eliot, brought up when and as he was, could not have escaped its influence. The atmosphere of his home in St. Louis must have been a strange, but not unusual, blend of Puritan• ism and Transcendental/Unitarianlsm. The social habits and manners of the Bliot family seem to have been those brought from the East when it was still Puritan, but the religious beliefs were undoubtedly those of the Mew England Unitarians with a strong admixture of the more liberal and progressive attitudes of the Transoondentalists. Later at Harvard, Thomas Steams must have come into contact with men who had been familiar, not merely with the ideas of the Transoendentalists, but with some of the progenitors
(1) TPiie American Transcendentalists. p. KZ. h7.
of the ideas themselves« And Eliot *8 work shows an awareness of these prominent strains in his inheritance. Emerson occasionally becomes the focus of his attention, and in the poem Sweeney Bract wo find the poet permitting himself an ironical sneer at the philosopher, deliberately misquoting him and actually mentioning him by name^. By the middle of the nineteenth century America had developed a cultural tradition and a religious sensibility which was entirely separate from, though intimately connected with, and in many ways similar to that of England, and Eliot*s work reflects the dilemma of a man who is deeply conscious of the debt he owes to both traditions. The authors of critical studies on Eliot, while paying lip-service in potted biographies to his American heritage, are curiously reticent about the question of his relation to the nineteenth century 2 background of America .. They tend to speak of his opposition to liberalism and humanism and the 'revolution' he effected in poetry almost entirely in terms of a reaction to the English cultural scene. It is tme, of course, that his essays, with very few exceptions'^, deal (1) Collected Poems. 1909-1935« p. ^3. (2) cf. Books by O.B.S. Maxwell, 6.A. George, Helen Gardner, C. Orover Smith and the Symposiums produced for his sixtieth and seventieth birthdays. (3) s*g* Tho essays on Irving Babbitt and Norman Poorater. Selected Essays, pp. &33-353• k6. with liberalism and humanism in their English manifesta• tions, and with problems arising out of specifically English literature. Zt is true also that his early poetry represents a determination to break down prevalent contemporary patterns of reading and writing English poetry; to escape the empty rhetoric of the Victorians and the trite flaccidity of the Georgians and break away from the shallow optimism that was its substance, but it must be remembered that the most decisive break with prevailing philosophical and poetical trends was made three years before he came into 'physical* contact with the cultural scene in Englandi in 1909 with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Zt would be silly to argue that Eliot can be under• stood only in relation to his American background and that the determining factor in all hie work is his reaction to it - the poetry and essays give abundant evidence of his conoem about the state of life and literature on both sides.of the Atlantio and his constant consciousness of himself in the context of a whole European tradition - but clearly he was deeply aware of this, his own immediate 'physical* background, was affected by it, and did react to it, in ways that help to explain why certain religious themes are played over and over again and why certain Christian doctrines, and attitudes receive far greater h9.
emphasia than others» and, furthersioro, tjhy the raligloos
sensibility of Eliot's t^ork diffess in some «ays pro-
fotmdlyg from that of his yotmger conterapory and fellot;
Christian If.Ho Auden. It is oooiaon to find Sllot and
Auden, together ^Jlth a fat? other Christian witers
identified in their attitudes and critioised in the same way. M.M. Rossg for esacaplep in Poetry and Poama Veritas
Clearly, poets like 7.S. 81iot and U.B. Auden, and novelists like ISauriao, Bemanos and Graham Greene - to mention only a fev of the better knoT^n names » constitute a unique oonstellation, a constellation vhioh took shape slowly and is only noxs being observed for t^hat it is. Those T^riters are Christian writers, in the exact sense. They are not merely Christians who happen to writOo ^eir art is consciously dedicated to the realisation of a specifioally Christian vision of reality .
It is my intention to question the validity of this statement. Bliot, however, deeply committed to the
Christian Church, is not a Christian writer in the exact sense in which Ross would have us believe. His art is, certainly, 'dedicated* to his vision of reality, but there are occasions when that vision bears little resemblance to the Christian understanding of the world, man and God, and that by comparison, the poetry of W.R.
Auden, thou^ in most cases artistically inferior, certains more truly the Christian apprehension. It is both fascinating and perplexing that two men so close to each other in time and in commitment to a small, rather
(1) p. 2i»3. 50. eolectica branch of the Catholic Church, should display such differences. 51.
CHAPTER III
T»S« Eliot and the philosophical attitudes of T.S. Hulme
Shortly before starting vork, on his poem The TJaste Landi T.Sa Eliot said of the Amerioah Transoendentalists that Neither l^erson nor any of the others was a real obaervor of the moral lifcg Hawthorne waso and was a realist oo.. the essays of Emerson are already on eneumbranoe. The work of Hawthorne is truly a criticism of the Puritan morality, of the Transcendentalist morality, and of the world which Hawthorne knowl* Zt seems that Eliot discovered in Hawthorne something of what he had found also in the works of Baudelaire and some of the French eymboliste: an artistic apprehension that shunned the literary and philosophical iword-worlds* of the nineteenth century and pierced beneath the superficial beauty and ugliness of human existence to a knowledge of *the boredom, and tho horror, and the glory*. But what characterises Hawthorne*s work and makes it distinctive is his firm belief in the notion of sin. At the root of his vision of life is a Calvinistic theology inherited from his Puritan forefathers. There is a stem
(l) Quoted by W»0, iSatthiesson in American ^«w«4afla««ft, p. 193- 52,
opposition to the optimism and the self-reliant doctrines of Emerson which had become so popular. Evil is seen as a real force, pride and lust are known and recognised as sinse Retribution and isolation are common esperlenoes in human life. D«H. Lawrence calls The Scarlet Letter *a sort of parable, an earthly story with a hellish meaning*'^. This is a serious and valid criticism of the book » its gothio trappings do little to hinder Hawthorne's apprehension of damnation and hell. It is impossible not to be reminded, at this Juncture, of the number of times in which these words *evil*, *hell*, and 'damnation* oake their appearance in criticism of Eliot's work too, and P.O. Katthlesson, citing Eliot's remarks about Hawthorne, comments that the 'dark strain of Hawthorne is more visible {Zn Bliot7 than in the work 2 Of any other writer of the present' . This is not a large claim, admitt^bly, and tho similarities between Hawthorne and Eliot cannot be pressed very far. Eliot's commenda• tion of the novelist as a realist does not involve him in philosophical or theological agreement, and the lines of his own reaction to Puritanism and Transcendentalism (l) ^Ifathaniol Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter'. jSjSlected Literary Criticism, ed. Anthony Seal, p. 3^7. (s) American Renaissancea p. 193> 53. do .;not follow those laid down by Hawthorne. Wxero Nathaniel Hawthorne adopted the religious sensibility of his anceetors{ T.S. Sliot adopted their social sensibility. Proa Uilliam Hathorno and succeeding generations Nathaniel / learned a Calvinistic theology which entailed a particular belief about the fallonness of creation and the sinfulness of manf from Thomas Myot and succeeding generations, Thomas Stearns learned an attitude of mind - an intellec• tual fastidiousness and integrity.
How unpleasant to meet i^r. Sliot I Uith his features of clerical cut. And his brow so grim And his mouth so prim And hie conversation so nicely Restricted to Uhat Precisely And If and Perhaps and But^.
7et the theory that Sliot*s Christianity is essen• tially an embracing of the theological principles which caused his forefathers to leave the Sngland of Charles X is frequently voiced by oritics. Xn the course of his brief assessment of Eliot's poetry in 1931* Bdimmd Uilson made the following remarks about the poet's much publicised entry into the Anglican Churchs ...OA. it seems to us less an Anglo-CathOlic conversion than a ro»awakening of the Hew Bnglander's conscience, of the never quite exorcised conviction of the ineradicable sinfi&lness of man ..... and ho looks for light to the theologians who offer salvation,
(l) Collected Poems, p. 1^*7. 5k,
not through economic re-adJustment, political reform, education or biological and psycho• logical study, but solely through ograoe". Eliot apparently today regards "Bvilf as some sort of ultimate reality, which it is impossible either to correct or to analyse. His moral principles seem to me stronger and more authentic than his religious mysticism - and his relation to the Anglo-Catholic Church appears largely artificial His religious tradition has reached him by way of Boston-'-. Zt must be remembered that these remarks were made over thirty years ago, some time before the full poetic formulation of Eliot's beliefs (in the plays and Pour Quartets) had appeared, but Ash Wednesday was already available and there is little in the later work (apart from a theme of vicarious suffering in the plays) which is not foreshadowed in tho poetry with which !/ilson was concerned, iloreover he has not deemed it necessary since then, to elaborate or qualify the Judgements of his 2 original chapter in Asal's Castle • To Uilson, as to tiatthiesson, a debt of gratitude is owed for placing Eliot firmly against an American background, but, strangoly enough, he drastically over• simplifies the religious tradition to which the poet was heir. Zt did indeed reach him 'by way of Boston*, but, (1) A3cel*s Castle, pp. 106-107. (2) The fact that t^ilson allowed Collins to publish the book completely unchanged>and with only a brief Foreword by the author, in the Fontana Library series in 1961, seems to indicates that Uil8on*s opinions have remained substantially the same. 55. it was a curious blend Of Puritanism, Unitarianism and Transcendentalism. The Calvinist conception of 'the ineradicable sinfulness of man' had disappeared from the tradition two generations earlier} the New Englander's oonscienoo - originally convicting the sinner of guilt - had been re-shaped into an instrument of personal progress and enlightenment in accordance with a theory of perfectibilityg and 'grace' at least in its Biblical and strictly theological sense, had become a forgotten word. JESliot's revulsion from his immediate environment^ was not a return to an earlier American tradition, it was the reaction of a man already deeply conscious of his Suropean inheritance. In some respects he did return to the seventeenth century, but it was not the seventeenth century of the Calvinist theocracies in New England, it was the seventeenth century of the Caroline Divines In England.
Zf UilsOn were ri^t in saying that Eliot looks to 'theologians who offer salvation .... solely through "grace", and describes his conversion as a 're-awakening of tho New Snglander's conscience', we would expect the religious beliefs of the poet to have some affinity with
(l) of. Herbert Howarth's account of the way in which Thomas Stearns reacted to the religious convictions of his grandfather at Harvard. Notes on Some Figures behind T.8. Eliot, p. 88. 56.
the . ideals of a theological movement in Europe that came to be known as Heo-Orthodosy. Led by the Swiss Calvinist, Karl Barth, the Protestant theologians were concerned with recalling the churches of the Reformed tradition to the *Biblioal' faith of their sixteenth century forefathers. Barth especially, seemed intent upon destroying the Liberal Protestant theology of the nineteenth century by insisting, powerfully and relentlessly, on the necessity for believing in the corruption of the created order, the dopravity of man, and his absolute dependence for salvation on the 'grace' of God.
Zt is true that a close parallel can be drawn between Eliot and Barth. They both accomplished a revolution in their own fieldsi they are both 'close to their age' responding to and shaping its sensibilltyt they both express the experience of men in a disintegrating societyt they both embody the dissatisfaction of a generation with theological and philosophical liberalism. All the same, Eliot's religious beliefs differ radically from Barth's. Despite the fact that he depicts in his poetry 'an unregenerate society' and a conviction of 'the ineradic• able sinfulness of man' he does not revert to the theological tradition of Puritanism or embrace that of ffeo-Orthodoxy. Ifith an attitude that was deliberately, even self-consciously, classical and European, his 57.
reaction to liberalism, humanism and sentimentality took him in the totally different direction of the English philosopher and literary figure, T.B. Hulme.
Hulae, however, died in 1917t and his philosophical Jottings remained unpublished until 1922, so that it is highly improbable that anything Eliot produced before The Waste Land could have been influenced by Hulme's writings. Moreover, although they had a number of mutual friends and aoquaintances, there is no record of the two men ever having met. Nonetheless there is a fundamental similiarity of outlook whieh cannot be overlooked and which has been commented on (though not extensively) by several critics. D.S. Savage, for instance, writing in 19'^^, said8 Eliot's view of personality follows very closely indeed upon that of T.B. Hulme, a writer who has evidently had a great influ- .enoe upon his thought1. Kathleen Nott in her book The Emperor's Clothes assumes throughput that there is a basic similarity, and Eliot himself quotes Hulme with some approval in his essay on 2 Baudelaire in 1930 . H.N. Fairchild traces a literary and poetical influence through Ezra Pound when he writes of the essays in The Sacred Wood (1920)> (1) The Personal Principle, pp.'100-101. (2) Selected Essays, p. 430. 58.
• Their basic ideas are considerably ^ indebted to Pound, through Pound to Hulme . Hulme'e importance in the group of poets who came to bo called the Zmagists is undeniable, and it is possible that hie influence extended far beyond the realms of literary theory and poetic technique, though there is little evidence for postulating its communication to Eliot.through Pound. Zt is more likely that Eliot already equipped philosophically with certain beliefs about human nature ('view of personality') discovered in Hulme a similarity of attitude which had as its basis a strong religious conviction, and gradually formulated a religious sensibility which, in opposition to liberalism, came to be a fine blend of specifically Christian doctrine and Hulrae'd pseudo-Christian religious oonviotions. Zt might seem strange that a declared member of the Church of England should be accused of possessing pseudo- Christian beliefs, eopecially since so much of what he says is expressed in the traditional terminology of Christianity and appears to be in agreement with.the anti-liberalism of the Continental theologies. On close examination, however, the similarities between Hulme and the Protestants turn out to bo entirely negative - partly because Hulme's theological bias was a Catholic one, but
(l) largely because he lacked or at least failed.to express in writing what is central to any Christian philosophy8 a doctrine of the Atonement. Their attitude grew out of. the same dissatisfaction with the contemporary cultural and religious situation, but while diagnosing tbe same iBomplaint, they offered different cures. They are at one in denouncing Liberalism and Romanticism - religion whioh is based (in accordance with the principles of Schleiormacher and Ritschl) upon feeling and experience, and virulently opposed all tendencies to belief in the innate goodness of man or the idea of progress. T-aoroover they all begin, quite explicitly, with a strong cohviotion of Original Sin.. Hulme says, for instance, of all philosophy since the Renaissance It all rests on the same conception of tho nature of man, and exhibits the same inability to realise the meaning of the dogma of Original Sinl. But the meaning he gives to the dogma is entirely different from that understood by the neo-orthodox theologians. For Berth and for Brunner - as also for all orthodox Christian thinkers - tho doctrine of Original Sin is set firmly in the context of the whole scheme of man's creation and salvation, which Bulme for all his use of technical terms, resolutely ignores. A similar deficiency. (l) Speculations, p. 13. 60. though less extreme in form oan be seen in T.S. Eliot's poetry. Here we will find that whereas the doctrine of the Znoarnation is deeply apprehended and figures proainently in nearly all tho poems, its complementary doctrine - that of tho Atonement whioh claims to deal speolfioally with the problem of Original Sin and human sinfulness - is hardly mentioned. Hulme never defines his concept of Original Sin but two quotations from Speculations will give his meaning quite clearlyt tibile he oan occasionally accomplish aots which partake of perfection, he can never himself ^ perfect he can only accomplish anything of value by discipline - ethical and political. Order is thus not ^ merely negative, but oreative and liberating • And in a disouesion of ROmantioism in arti One oan define the classical quite clearly as the exact opposite to this. Elan is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. Zt is only by tradition and organization that anything decent can be got out of him • Apart from the arrogance of tone there is nothing that can be called specifically un-Christian about these statements, but they are obviously written from a Catholic background and consequently differ in sensibility from the formulations (1) ^peculations, p. 47< (2) Zbid., po 116. ^1. of the continental Protestants on the same subjects. It is difficult to imagine Bulme agreeing with Barth's assertion So great is the ruin of the creature that less than the self-surrender of Ctod would not suffice for its resoue^. It is not only the soteriologioal context whioh is unfamiliar to Hulme, but the insistence upon the depravity of man ('the ruin of the creature'). Thle is an insistence whiioh is foreign to the Catholic tradition of Christianity too, and it will be noticed that on these occasions when Hulme's religious ideas are in accordance with orthodox Christian dootrines, it is on the Catholic rather than the Protestant side that his emphasis falls. Eliot's position, though somewhat complicated by his distinctively American Protestant inheritance, has a similar bias. It is necessary, when using the terms 'Catholic' and 'Protestant', to be aware of the dangers which beset the discussion. On the one hand the sharp divisions which characterise western Christendom create a tendency to treat the terms as mutually exclusive i to make rigid distinctions; to draw hard and fast doctrinal boundaries and over.>simplify theological disagreement. Equally (l) Dogmatics in Outline, p. 116. 62. inaccurate is the attitude whioh glosses over the disputes of over four centuries and refuses to acknowledge the depth of doctrinal differences inherent in the argument between Catholic and Protestant theology. Xn areas of disagreement like tho dootrinos of the Church and the SaorfiunentSB Original Sin, Predestination and Justification it must bo rooognised that there are profound differences, but even.here the labels 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' frequently serve only to indicate a bias or an emphasis rather than define a dogmatic position. Hulme's main preoccupation is with the doctrine of Original Sin and in his treatment of it, the accent falls continually upon the 'lack of perfection' in man, and not upon bis 'corruption*. The consequences of the Fall are viewed as a deprivation rather than as a depravation, and he speaks» consequently, of the possibility of man 'partaking of perfection', a phrase whioh suggests a theology of 8an<9tifyina grace rather than ono of redeeming or Justifying grace. Although perfection (moral and aesthetic) is impossible on the human piano, thosre is place for striving' to achieve things of value at this levelp and he shows the traditional Catholic concern for, and Interest in, contemporary society and culture. Xt is at this point that tho divergence between Hulme's and Barth's religious ideas becomes most pronounced. 63. t^ereas both reacted violently to Romantioiam and l^iberal- ism and the Ritsohlian suggestion that the kingdom of God could be realised on earthy Hulme continued to advocate the striving for perfection by personal discipline and the submission to the institution, whilo Barth oategorieally denounoed a Christian apologotio which was trying to come to terms with contemporary culture and all theology whioh was not built upon the atoning work of Jesus Christ alone. Redemption, whioh is a key• word in Barth (and all Christian,theology Catholic or Protestant) never makes an appearance in Hulme'o writings, and it cannot be denied that, despite his profession of Christianity and the frequency with which he embarks on a discussion of Original Sin, therei is in Speculations a conapiottous lack of the Christian understanding of sin. His eonoeption of the doctrine seems to revolve entirely around his preoocupation with the problems of human finitude and limitation. Original Sin is a term used to describe this particular condition of life and has little to do with that pattern of self-assertion and rebellion of whioh the Genesis myth spoaks. Zt must be admitted that in a writer like the Spanish philosopher Iffnamuno the Catholic tradition shows itself verging on a similar interpretation of the doctrine as he speaks about the 'hunger of immortality*. 6k, For what is specific in the Catholic religion is Immortaliaation and not Justification, in the Protestant sensed. It is this strain in the Catholic sensibility which has led the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebnhr to accuse Catholicism of neglecting 'the more basic issues of Biblical religion' in phrases that, wrested from their original context fi^id applied to.the poetry of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Audeup neatly point up basic differences of attitude. The issue is not the finiteness of man but his sin) not his .involvement in the flux of nature but his abortive attempts to escape that flux. rsho issue of Biblical religion is not primarily the problem of how finite man can know God, but how sinful man is to be reconciled to God But Unamuno can hardly be regarded as the representative voice of the Church for despite its emphasis on the deprivation of graces and its less serious view of the consequences of the Fall, tho Catholic Church has never abandoned the Biblical concept of sin as man's rebellions pride issuing in acts for which he is responsible and involving him in a pattern of corruption iand separation for which the Atonement is the only solution. Soth T.B. Hulme and T.S. Eliot, however, represent, M tho Tya^io Sense of ^i^e, p. 67. (2) The Nature and Destiny of Han. Vol. .1. p. 158. 65. in their ovn waySf that Catholic outlook t^hleh Niebuhr deplores* It mi^^t bo argued that this, kind of erltioal Judgement is unfair to Slulmo vhose Speculations is not the expression of a oarefnlly t;orked-ont system but a posthumona collection of philosophical and critical Jottings* Httlmea hot^everg does use theological categories and taast be Judged by themo CSOreover, despite the fragmentary nature of the t»ork and the superficial eontradietionse a fundamentally unified vision of life emerges from those apparently haphasard meditations* Zt is the vision of a man acutely conscious of the t^eaknesses of liberal and romantic attitudes and bitterly oxiaro of the imperfection and mutability of human existence. There is nothing specifically Christian about this apprehension,, nor about the value he attaches to discipline and order, nor even the belief that perfection can only be found at a level vhioh is outside and beyond the natural t^orld* Eliot*s position is at once, both easier and more difficult to understand* The corpus of his trork is far greater and, unlike Hulme*8 is a consciously constructed edifice* But the poet has made particular efforts at dissociating the tforks from their creator, and, «hat is of greater importance, the vork itself is that of the imaginative artist primarily concerned i^ith communicating 66. the qiiallty and intensity of partieislar ezperieneoa^t not that of a phllospher or a theologian ospoundlng a system by vbioh laen oi^t be ezpeoted to order their Uvea. Out inevitably a 'philosophy* or 'theology* does emerges a vision of life io comraunioated» and, in the later poetry espeoiallyt it is a vision that bears elose resemblanoe to that of TDS* Hulrae. In Ponr Quartets, uhioh Z take to bo the eulciination of Eliot *s imaginative and intellec toal efforts 9 ve see hiia preoooupied» as Huliae VBLB, vith the mutability of huaan life(the finitoness of man's existence and his inoeoapable involvement in the flus. Babette Deuteeh is only one of many who claim that Eliot *«*«o is concerned tiith one themei sin and redemption* • Sat the attitudes which were responsible for Puritan theology have little place in Pour Quartets. Zt has at its heart the question of knowledge« not reconciliation. Xt iso to use ITiebuhr*s distinotiong the creation of an artist struggling with the problem of *how finite man oan Isnow God* rather than with *how sinful man oan be rooonciled to him*. Xn terms of Christian doctrine we shall discover that it turns upon the asis of the Xnoamation. Zts power lies in Bliot*8 (1) of. Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca. Selected Bssaxa pp. 126«1*0. (2) *The Auditory Zmagination*. Poetry in Oar Time, p. 160. 67. grasp of the meaning of the doctrine *the t7ord was made fiosh^B The Christian vision Of Pour Quartets is limited, and although the poet tries to include the total Ohriatian esperienoe by introducing meditations on the Cross and Passion, tho attempts at expressing the meaning of the Atonement are artificial and unconvincing beside his treatment of the Zncarnation. similarity between Bliot and Hnlme, though evident, must not be exaggerated, and the claim of Babotte Oeutsch that *sin and redemption* are the dominant themes in all Sliofs work is not to bo dismissed out of hand, f^ey are central in the plays and are t^oven into much of the pattern of the early poetry, but they occur only occasionally, and in a somewhat artificial nay in the poems vhioh follow Ash Wodneadav* IThile it is possible to argue convincingly for the 'essential unity* of JSliot*8 work^ in that the later productions represent a development of and not a break from, earlier ones, there is little evidence for maintaining that the final plays develop the attitudes of Pour Quartets, or that the two early plays have a real connection with the poem they appear to resemble. It is as though the strands which had been closely woven together in the early work are drawn apart in Ash Uedneeday and dealt with separately in the poems and plays which followed. (l) Helen Gardner* The Art of T*S. Eliot, p. 78. 68. CHAP1SR ZV Eliots* Poetry (l). 1909 - 1917 and Poems 1920 It is an linregenerate world which Eliot depicts in his early poetryt a world he had learned to observe through the eyes of Saudelaire and the French 83rmbolist8 6 a world in which listless human beings act out meaningless lives in squalid surroundings. The voliame entitled Prufrock and Other Observations is dominated by the image of the oitys and in the urbania accents of poeas like The Boston Evening Transcript. Aunt Helen and Cousin Wancv the hypocrisy and fatuousness of comfortable Edwardian society are mockingly esposed. I^one of these pooms possesses much poetic power - Aunt Helen is an elaborate verse-game played with references from the Revelation of St. John the Divine« and the use of the quotation from IIIeredith*8 Lucifer in Starlight in Cousin Wancv. is one of the rare instanoes in which Eliot*8 irony is too obvious to be effective - but the poems leave the reader in no doubt as to the poet*8.own attitude to the liberal• ism eind humanism whioh surrounded him. The newspaper, The Boston Evening Transcriptpopular among members of the fashionable liberal circles in ^ew England is held up to witty ridicule, and its readers are almost embryonic 69. •objective correlatives* for Eliot*e complicated emotional reaction to these principles which he is deriding* There is no trace of pity in these poems, and were it not for their humour, the cold detachment with which the sooioty is scorned would amount almost to cruelty* Throui^out the volume Eliot draws a picture of human life which stands in deliberate and sometimes cynical contrast to those drawn both by tho Tremooendental* ists and by his own contempories• In the four poems which constitute Preludes the images combine to convey not merely an atmosphere of decay and meanness, but a sense of the purposelessness of existence* The mention of *the lighting of the lamps* at the end of the first poom is a bitterly ironic reminder of a life which has wamth and meaning. It ouggeets tho ebb and flow of. human fellowship and carries the deeper religious oonnotation of the ceremonial lifting of lamps at evening in Jewish, Christian and pagan house• hold devotions^* Eut hero the lamps are lit in a dismal side-street with only a cab-horse to appreciate their significance* mie sharp staccato presentation of tho images in these first thirteen lines suggests a life which is a series of disconnected events* Tho suggestion (1) Gregory Oix* The Shane of the Liturgy* pp. U17-M8. 70. is underlined later in words which demonstrate Eliot*s antipathy to Emerson*s statement about the divinity of the soul, and echo the philosophical tenets of P.B* Bradley. Tou doaed, and watched the night revealing The thousand sordid images Of which your soul was constituted} Tbey flickered against the ceilingl. Par from being able to look into his own soul and rely upon his natural divinity, a man discovers that his inner reality consists of nothing but an agglomeration of disparate sentient experiences* Appearance and reality are, in the literal sense, confused, ^e distinotioh between what is perceived and the perceiver himself is destroyed. But Eliot is not a pure Bradleyan and is perfectly prepared to treat this *confusion* ambiguously and put it to ingenious poetic use as in tho second Preludei With other masquerades That time resumes. One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms^. The word *masquerades* is impbrtant here. It is not merely a decorative grimace but suggests that all life is a confusion of reality with appearance. The horror (1) Collected Poems, p* 22, (2) Ibid., p. 21. 71. is increased by the picture of the multiplicity of the deception. All life is a play-acting, and with the blurring of the distinction between appearance and reality man no longer knows what he is. Bis identity symbolised by the unassailable separateness of his own soul is lost and he is dissolved in the squalid world which surrounds him^ the world of appearance His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block. Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and sis 6*clocks^ The search for reality and the problematic relation between appearance and reality is a constetntly-rocurring theme in Eliot*s poetry. It turns up again in Oerontion. The Uaete Lane. Ash Uedneedav. the Ariel poems and, of course Pour Qnarteits. But it is the central theme of only one of the plays t The Confidential Clerk. Zt is not a particularly Christian preoccupation - it has been the concern of philosophical and theological systems since before the time of Plato. One might almost say, remember• ing Niebuhr*s remarks about Biblical religion, that it is of little concern to Biblical Christianity. Certainly Jewish religion and the early Christian church give no evidence for supposing that the problem of the nature of (1) As in Rhapsody on a Ifindv Wiaht. pp. 2^-26, (2) Zbid,,. p. 32. 72. reality was ever considered, and yet Eliot chooses a specifically Christian doctrine - the Incarnation - to solve the problem in tho greatest of his poetic works. Althou^ no theological categories are used in this early volume, the world with which it deals, might well J ' be described as unregenerate - experiencing the consequences of Original Sin, but strangely enough the picture of the redemption offered in Eliot*s later work (especially your Quartets) is one in which the cardinal Christian notion of reconciliation is blurred and indirect. Boreas Preludes and Rhapsody pn ,a,gindv Wight are slightly and intentionally melodramatic in their approach, The Love Sona of J. Alfred Pmfrock and Port»:ait of a Lady are wry and ironical. They deal, however, with essentially the same situation* Both Prufropk and the young man are aware of living in the tension between appearEUioe and reality and are both incapable of forcing, the moment *to its crisis* and resolving the tension. For both of them, appearance and unreality are bound up with the trivialities of social behaviour I have measured out my life with coffee spoons (l) Collected Poems* p. 12. 73. Particularly I remark An English countess goes Upon the stage. A Creek was ciUrdered at a Polish dance. Another bank defaulter has confessed^. And in Prufrock the problem of finitude and decay - Time • makes its appearancei X.grow old ....o Z grew old..... 2 Z shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled . Even in these mocking, amused lines we have man*s predica* ment carefully outlined* Prufrock is caught up in the process of decay and death Just as he is caught up in the social trivialities of his existence, and though he is frustratedly aware of his own imprisonment, he is equally aware of his cxm impotences But though Z have wept and fasted, wept and praved, Though Z have seen my head (grown sli^tly bald) brou^t in upon a platter, Z am no prophet - and here*s no great matter3| nearest he oan come to relieving the tension created by his knowledge and his impotence is either by giving voice to the ludicrous protests of Shall Z part my hair behind? Do Z dare to eat a poach? or by trying the self-delusion of oa.p.and her®*a no great matter (1) Collected Poems, p. 18. (2) Xbid., p. 15. (3) Zbid., p. 14. 7«^. ^e know, as he asks it, that the question which super• ficially , has such an important sound Do I dare Disturb the universe? is for Prufrock, only an academic one, a sardonic reminder of his own hopelessness. The universe is incapable of being disturbed. The possibility of *murdering* or *creating* anything is prevented in a world where even Laaarus *CQme from the dead* would be met with nothing but a petulant comment* The universe itself is ailing and only half-alive. Vhen the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a tablet and Prufrock and tho young man of Portrait arc inescapably part of this fragmentozy, listless world. They are the anticipation of the Hollow Hen, not *lost, violent souls* but empty ones, and so offer a contrast with Sweeney whose corruption, however bestial, seems at least to offer the possibility of damnation* In these early poems Eliot is concerned with the theme of sin and redemption in an entirely negative way* Both redemption and damnation are an impossibility (or an irrelevance) in a world where there is no apprehension of sin* Prufrock does not belong to the Calvinistio hell which Pernor ^uhn^ claims Eliot (l) See T*S. Eliot A Selected Critique, ed. by L. Unger, ^ p* 137. *Orpheus in Hell*, Pernor ^uhn. pp* 120-137. 75. has created. Zt is far more likely that he is an occupant of, what Edith Sitwell has called the * shallow hell* which lies Just below the surface of modem life. So it is only in the negative aspect of his work, his rejection of the progressive philosophical attitudes of the nineteenth century, that Eliot is linked with Calvinism in the shape of the neo-orthodoz theologians. The recognition of the condition of decay and death} of the trivial and fragmentary nature of existence does not imply a sense of sin or an interest (in these poems) in the cause of the eondition. That these things are, theologically speaking, the result of Original Sin is not his interest here. Unlike Auden he does not probe into the cause of the condition, he depicts it and, later, seeks a way of escape. Consequently his desire (contrary to Edmund Wilson*s contention) is for knowledge of reality and, in religious terms, mystical union rather than for reconciliation and redemption. This is pre• figured in Prufrock in the vision of the mermaids in the closing lines of the poem. Z have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back Hhen the wind blows the water white and black There is the suggestion of a visionary experience, almost a mystical fantasy in these lines. The singing is an ironic counterpoint to the conversation, of *hnman voices* 76. which drags Prufrook back to the pettiness and squalor of his real life. But again there is also the suggestion of the confusion of reality and appearance} we cannot be sure that the vision of the mermaids and their singing offers any kind of genuine perception. Zt is, after all, only out of a dream that we are awakened and drowned. But the singing of the mermaids is undoubtedly meant to contrast with the noise of the voices that awaken us; for the latter is connected with the futile activity of the women who come and go Talking of Michelangelo. We are reminded again of these voices all the way through Portrait of a Lady which is full of trivial conversation, and later in The TJaete Land where there is the extended image of sordidnees conveyed in the chatter of the public house. And later still, in Ash Wednesday and Pour Quartets, there is the opposition of the noisy distraction of earthly speech to the stillness of the Word of God . .Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them. The Iford in the desert Zs most attacked by voices of temptation^, Zf we were to trace the pattern, of the development of the * singing* symbol systematically throughout Eliot*8 (1) Pour Qnarteta. p. 12. 77.- poetry, we should end with something that was both extremely complex and utterly unified. Ife should find it suggests something different every time it occurs, but that it is linked with, and even conditioned by, every other occurrence. Helen Gardiner's arguments for the *essentlal unity* of Eliot*s poetry are completely vindicated by an examination of the way in which tho poet uses his images. Here in Prufrqok the singing contrasts with the speech of the human voices, but it has the deliberate ambiguity which colours the whole of the mermaid *episode*. The vision holds out the possibility of real perception and yet falls to produce it. It has tho appearance of a *moment out of time*, and yet is not that moment. The singing is deceptive and yet suggests a possible way to the gaining of real knowledge. In Journey of tho Magi, tho deceptive nature of the singing is emphasised in a line which actually identifies the two images of 'voices* and 'singing* Sleeping in snatches, Ifith the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly^. But in The Hollow Men, where a similar conjunction between 'voices' and 'singing' occurs, the suggestion is that of the heavenly, choirs or the unearthly and unending 'music (l) Collected Poems, p. 107. 78, of the spheres* There, is a tree swinging And voices are Zn the wind*s singing Uoro distant and more solemn Than a fading star^. Zn the final movement of The Uaete Land the * singing* of the dry grass is ironically compared with that of the hermit-thrush, but the introduction of the thrush*8 song is significant for it is the song of the woodthrush in the later poem Marina which accompanies the moment of 2 • recognition • And finally in Pour Quartets it is the call of the bird which accompanies the experience of the * timeless moment* in which the whole pattern of life 3 is glimpsed, in whioh reality is finally apprehended . Zt is true to say that Pour Quartets grows out of the poems of this first volume and that the investigation of, and solution for, the dichotomy between, and confusion of, appearance and reality is the culminating develop• ment of one of the central preoeeupationSof the Prufrock ^ volume. But it is only one of the themes of Prufrock. and Four Quartets tends to sever the connection of the problem itself with the background in whioh It is set. (1) Collected Poems, p, 88. (2) *And the woodthrnst calling through the fog lly daughter.* Collected Poems, p. Il4. (3) *0o, go, go, said the birds human kind Cannot bear very much reality.* Four Quartets, p. 8. 79* The theme becomes both more personal and more philosophical, more universal and less concrete in its presentation. Eliot's interest in the unregenerate society wanes as he approaches Four Quartets. The desire for mystical union grows stronger and the need for,atonement is overlooked. But before this development took place, tho unregenerateness which Bliot had painted with such ironic care in Pn^freck was subjected to a more searching investigation in Poems 1920. The yaete Land and Sweeney Aponistes. pOEMS 1^20. The poetic world of the first volume is quite different from that of the second, and the characters who people these worlds demonstrate the difference forcibly. J« Alfred Prufrock who is Deferential, glad to be of use. Politic, cautious, and metioulous'^l and the young man of Portrait whose 2 smile' falls heavily among the bric-a-brac have given place to Sweeney 3 Letting his arms hang down to laugh*^. (1) Cc^llected Poems* p* 15. (2) Ibid., p* 19. (3) Ibid., p. 57. 80. And the women of the earlier volume, who . • •.. come and go . Talking of laichelangelo-^. are replaced by the 'ladies of the corridor'. Yhe Princess Volupine and Rachel nee Rablnovitch have taken the place of the one who pouted and complained 'settling a pillow by her head' and the other who slowly twisted lilac stalks as she talked. The point of those differences is not merely that Eliot wishes to describe a universal disease) and, by the use of different 'people* to domonstrate the same kind of sickness at various levels of society, it is that the disease itself has changed. The society is being subjected to a different kind of interpretation. Eliot's vision of man cmd society has shifted since the production of Prufrock. In 1930 he published an Introduction to the Intimate Journals of Charles Baudelaire in which he remarked that the French poet*6 main concern was with «•*.* the real problem of good and evil In the middle of the nineteenth century, the age . which (at its best) Goethe had prefigured, an age of bustle, programmes, platforms, scientific progress, hiuoanitarieuiism, and revolutions which improved nothing, an age of progressive degrada• tion* Baudelaire perceived that what really matters is Sin and Redemption To a mind observant of post-Voltaire France ... the recognition of the reality of Sin is a New Life; and the possibility of damnation is so immense (1) Collected Poems, p. 12. 81. a relief in a «orld of eleotoral reforaie plebieoiteoo BOX. rGforae, and dress refonso that datanation itself is an iEunediato form •f salvation — of salvation frooi the ennui Of podem lifo^. The truth or falsity of this evaluation is not of itaportanbe heroe hut t^hat i0 of iaportaiioe is the faet of the applicability of laoot of these remarks to Bliot hicaself* and it is signifleant that at least tt»o of Bliot*8 own oritioo tell: about his tfork in terms t^hieh, if not identical« are at least very reminiseent of those ^hieh the poet uses in hio discussion of Baudelaire e Sabette Deutsoh*e contention about the oentrality of *sin and redemption* has already been mentionedo In The Tightrope tfalkers. Oiorgio CSelehiori says of Stjoenev Apronistee that the fundamental feeling; in the fragments is * • • • • e the sonao of sing sin intended in its fully Christian and scriptural meaning o •. • * and elaborates his point by olaiiainis that this sense of sin *.. e • is openly ozproesed for the first time in Sweeney Aeeonistee. thoui^ it was adumbrated in the earlier poem The Hollow Ken o Melohiori is probably Justified in finding the •sense of sin* expressed openly for the first time in the two fragments which constitute Sweeney Agonistes. but (1) *Battdelairo.* Selected Bssaya. p. 427» (2) Selchiorl, pp. 110 and 112. 83. mistaken, Z bollevo» In finding it adnmbratod in the earlier poem The Hollow Men, ^ile it is true that on earlier draft of part of 'gho Hollotsr Hen did appear in 192<^» under the title Poris'e Dream Songs^. it ?7ould be VTons to identify Doris tfith the character t?ho taakes an appearance in the t^o fragments p for the atnioephero and ideas of these songs have their origins in Pmfrock and Rhapsody6 Styeenev Agonietea* on the other handg belongs stylistioally and philosophically to the ^orld of Oerontion and Sweeney Erect» to the poems of the 1920 volume in trhioh Si^eeney hiiaself appears. It is in regard to this seoond volume that \ao begin to see the aptness of applying Sliot'e remarks about Baudelaire to the English poet himself. Zn Prufrocb t?e had the cynical portrayal of the 'age of progressive degradation's the bitter depiction of *tho ennui of modem life* in which lack of knowledge prevented either sin or damnation... Here» as later in Sweeney Agonistes. he turns his attention» not always successfully, to problems which can accurately be described in Christian terme of sin and evil and the possibility of damnation. Baudelaire deeoribes his thoughts and feelings in the terms of a personal myth which included •demons, black (l) of. D.B.S. Biaswell. The Poetry of I'.S. Bliot« pp. 213-2l2i. 83, masses, and romantic blasphemy*. Bliot*8 myth, though equally personal, belongs to the twentieth century and its teriQG are prostitution, seduction, betrayal and murdero According to Sliot, it was no more than an *accident of time* which oauoed Baudelaire to alight upon the •vocabulary of blasphemy* for the poetic esproesion of his belief o. The same could be said of his ot^ use of distinctively twentieth century scenes and situations o The frequent jnsctaposition^ of ancient and modem civilisation in lSliot*e work clearly demon• strates his intention of suggesting that the problems he presents are not confined to a particular period or a particular setting. The half-bitter pessimism which pervades the earlier volume and in which something closely akin to a *]aulmean* view of man as a limited, frustrated ereature is espressed, has been largely, replaced in most of the poems of the later volume by an amused and amusing cynicism which cloaks, in religious teanas, a deeper penetration of the human condition. Uith the single exception of Gerontion. every Snglish poem follows the same pattern. The manner is deliberately light, but tightly controlled and highly, sometimes salf'ooneoiously, allusive, and is a device chosen, like that of farce in The Confidential Clerk, in order to avoid the dangers of pomposity and priggiahnese in 84. treating themes like sin and evil. If the end of most of the * characters.* in the first volume is to esperienee the final futility and *tum to dust again*, the end of a number in the second is to experience the final corruption and discover datonation. The characters of the early poeas demand release, the characters of the later require dasmation. GerotitionB like a few poems which were to follow later, stands soQowhere in between these two views of man*s condition. It is obviously different, in style and feeling, from any of the other poems of the 1920 volume and Gerontion himself bears a closer resemblance to ?rufrock or the young man of Portrait than he does to Swfaeney or Bleistein. In some ways he resembles a ?rufrock grown oldo Scv althou^ he is mere ozperienced than Prufrook and has a greater degree of self-knowledge, the treary, regretful reoisaisooncoo % was neither at the hot gates S^or fought in the warsa rain , 0or knee deep in the salt i3ar<8h, . . . is the logical outeooie of an attitude which reftiaoed to s<}ueese the universe into a ball or ask the overwhelming question. The repetition of the verb *fought* emphasises Qerontion*s own preoooupation with his own failure to act. As a result he finds himself (1) Collected Poeae. p. 37* 85. •an old man in a dry month .... waiting for rain*. Qut the vision of the life of commitment and action is theatrical and slightly absurd (knee deep in the salt raarshee heaving a cutlass) so that behind the images there lies the pessimiotio suggestion that Gerontion's esperience is universal, and fturther, that no act of commitment or type of involvement pan bring meaningful- ness and that all human beings are condemned to lives which are essentially sterile. This comes very close to To E. Httlffle*s oonoeption of man as a hopelessly limited creature enduring a meaningless esistenee unless some order is imposed upon that ozistence from outside« These with a thousand small deliberations Protract the profit of their chilled delirium, Sseite the membrane, when the sense has cooled, Uith pungent sauces, multiply variety , . Xn a wilderness of mirrors ••«••• if no order is imposed upon the lives of huEian beings their end is disjsolution into the oloments from which they come, dust and air. Ue will discover in Vho tyaote Land and Pour Quartete that the purging and destroying power of water and fire is needed to prevent this final dissolution. Per men whose lives have been lived without a pattern or a meaning, there is only death without a meaning or a pattem. Gerontion (in the tradition of (1) Collected Poems, p. 39. 86. fierontiu^) is a pOem about death and what comes after. ^at will the spider do . Suspend its operationss will the weevil Delay? De Bailhaohog Presca, E3ro. Caramel, whirled Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear Xn fraotured atoas...... But with thie veiled reference to 'the fate of S'ranoeeea, another note is sounded, that of damnation. It is only a faint reminder however, for, while the souls who are blown about on the howling wind of Hell retain their individuality and know their own damnation, the three 'type* Characters aentionod here seeia merely to undergo dissolution into * fractured atoms* <» a fate which can hardly be dignified with the name * damnation*. And yet the possibility has been Just glimpsed as the scene changes to four characters more oonoretoly imagined 8 &lr. Silvero, Hakagawa, Madame do Tomquiet, and S'raulein von Kulp. T.S. Bulme described Original Sin in tertao of man*.o limitations and imperfections, but in fact, the roots of sin are to be found in doliborately-willod actions (the kind of aotlons of which Prufrook and Oerontion are incapable), the corruption and distortion of what is originally good and beautiful. Paolo and Pranoesoa, for instance, find themselves condemned to the Second Circle of Hell because they allowed the corruption of love into lust. Although Gerontion himself sees little chance of *salvation by damnation* there is 87. more than a hint that in these four figures the possibil• ity of damnation hovers in the background. They have helped to corrupt and debase both love and religion. The connection between love and religion is brought out in an extraordinarily complicated and rather confused collection of images In the juvescenee of the year Came Christ the tiger Zn depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, - flowering Judas To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk Amphg whispers( by Mr. Silvero With caressing hands, at Limoges ^o walked all night in the next roomi By Hakagawa, bPwing amoh^ the Titians; By Kadame de Toumquist, in the dark room Shifting the candles t Praulein von Kulp ^ ISho turned in the hall, one hand on the door.... Although there Is a quotation from a Christmas sermon by Lancelot Andrewes, it is the spring festival of Easter that is emphasised here. Eliot is not introducing an Znearnatlon motif but a Resurrection one. The •darkness* ie the darkness of the tomb. And the connection is made (as it has often been made) between the Besusel- tation of the eorn-god of the pagan fertility-cults and the Resurrection of Chj:'ist. It is at a time of swaraing reproduction, in the month of fertility, that Christ comes. There is a sense of danger and animal sensuality about this coming, placed as it is between *the Juvescence (l) Colleeted Poems, pp. 37-38. 88. of the year* and * depraved Uay* o The suggestion of the corruption of love and religion is increased in the images which follows of the Blessed Sacrament being eaten and divided and drunk * among whispers*; of the * caressing hands* and the shifting of the candles. The lines are full of hints and nuanoeo but nothing is * spelled out* and Hugh Senner*s claim that *Sorae rite, not innocent unites these people* is a little too assertive. Perhaps there are suggestions of a Black Sdass and furtive orgies, but it is more important to understand that these people have deliberately debased good and beautiful things, (of. Hr. Eugenides in The Waste Land) and have renounced the Christian way of salvation and distorted their own lives by their demand for self•gratification. Signs are taken for wonders. "Ue would see a sign I ° Coming as it does after the presentation of debased religion and distorted human lives, the line After suoh knowledge, what forgivenessf has deep theological ioplieations. tt recalls the sin of Adam, ^he *typo* oin of mankind and is intimately linked with knowledge. Zn the Oenesie myth, the man and the woman desired the fruit, not of the tree of life which could confer imsaortality, but of the tree of the 89. knowledge of good and evil^. The possibility of damnation now enters for evil is known as a positive osperienoe r After suoh knowledge, what forgiveness? Salvation is needed, yet God*s response to the rebellion of Adam was to forbid hip and ISve access to the tree of 2 life, to drive them from the Garden and bar the entrance . for the Christian, the answer to the question *what forgivdnoss?* is the Sooond Adam, iSosmo Christ. Sut here in perontion we have Christianity corrupted, the Christian iyf A-ar^ debased and the Saviour Himself appearing ambiguously as *tho tiger*. ^ At first it is ho who is eaten, divided, and drunk, but this changes with the s'e-oaotiag of the original image The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. fh& isaeans of salvotion becomes the way of daomation. ^e penalty for corrupting what is good is final rejection, and there is the sli^t staggostion here of St. Paul*s remarks about the Eucharist S'or he that eatotb and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord*s body3. (1) Genesiso Ch. m w, 1-6. (2) Sbid, V. 2<(. (3) St. Paul, The girat Boistle to the Corinthians. Ch. SI, V. 29. 90. But though these themes of the desecration of religion and the corruption of human relationships (it was the. lustful who were condemned to be blown about the Second Circle) caake their appearance in Cerent ion, they are not dominant motifs, and the pervading atmosphere is not one of positive evil or real sin. The speaker is the type of human nature here, and like Prufrock a forerunner of the hollow men Paralysed force, gesture without motion^, Z have lost my sig^t, smell, hearing, taste and touch^. The view of man is that which was adumbrated in Prufrock and Portrait of a Ladv. The emptiness of life (ssrmbolised both by the dryness and the wind) and the inability to act meaningfully are emphasised. The past is of no help in discovering the meaning of the present but is seen as a mere flux of events to which there is neither pattern nor key • eoo Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions^ Guides us by vanities ^ ESan is irrevocably caught up iii a process that is (1) Collected Poems, p. 87< (2) Zbid., p. 39. (3) Zbid., p. 38. 91. arbitrary and meaningless and against which he has no redress. So the poem ends with a half'^^himpering, resigned submissione The key has not been found, the pattern does not exist. There is not even positive evil, so there is no question of relief by damnation or salvation. And an old man driven by the Trades To a sleepy comer. Tenants of the house Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season. It is a difficult poem, but not difficult In the sense in which A Cooking Bga is difficult. Gerontion*s diffioulty is like that of Marina and Pour Quartets. Language is used in a highly original and individual way, words are taken out of their conventional contests and given new meaning and imagery works at various levels demanding a variety of responses, l^oreover there are problems created by the specifically *modem* nature of the poetry I the rapid shift from image to image and the absence of logical connections. Above all there are the subtle ^d eomplos philosophical preoccupations espressed by the sensuous medium of poetic language. Gerontion is not a treatise on the nature Of man, it is an evocation of a particular human esperienoe (an apprehension and resigned acceptance of the meaninglessness of human life)} nonetheless it is impossible to escape the philosophical attitudes to life and death which cause this particular 92. kind of evocation. In Gerontion the reader finds himself involved in the particular experience of the central character in a way in which he is not involved in the experience of any other cheiraoter in this volume. Sweeney, Doris, Rachel and the rest are caricatures and the choice of a deliberately raoy, cynical attitude places them beyond the reach of identification and S3rmpathy, while, at the same time, it allows them to operate as • typos• of human behaviour. Zt is significant that in his first attempt at poetic drama, ISliot, rather than adapting and extending the quasi-dramatic techniques of Prufrock and Portrait, ohose to emphasise the elements of caricature and impersonation which are typical of the 1920 poems. The etylieed attitudes struck by the protagonists in Sweeney Agonietea. and the exaggerated melodrama of the second fragment underline the connection between the fragments of 1932 and the earlier poems of 1920. Like Baudelaire, Eliot often comes closest to orthodox Christian doctrine, not in works which utilise the recognisable Christieun myth, but, as Poems 1920 illustrates, in works which make no mention of it at all. Hone of the Christian traditions have ever defined Original Sin in the way that T.B. Hulme does, merely as a state of imperfection^ incompleteness and finitudo. 93. These are only some of the results of an initial defiance, a wilful defacement of the image of God^ a deliberate corruption of what io good and beautiful. This note of wilful corruption is only hinted at in the first volume of Eliot^s poetry, but is played much more loudly in the second. If One compares the picture of Prufrock or Gos^ntion with the following lines from Bnrbank with a Baedeker» . Bleiotein with a Cigarg A saggy bending of the knees And elbows, with palms turned out, Chioago Semite Viennese^. the difference becomes obvious. There are at least two suggestions of depravity in the Mer poem. Pirst, the reduction of the human being to the level of an animal, and secondly the reduction of the sexual act to the level of a business transaction. The animal-like behaviour of human beings, only suggested here, is described explicitly in Sweeney Er&ot 2 Gesture of orang-outang For man to allow himself to sink to the level of the animal is a perversion of his nature, and the lustful, grasping attitude usually associated with desire for financial gain is a perversion of the creative sexual impulse^ (1) Collected Poems, p. 40. (2) Zbid., p. 42 (3) of. The ^aste Land. 1. 31^* and Ash Wednesday. Pt. ZV. 9h. The animal metaphor used in Burbank and Sweeney Erect occurs frequently in the rest of the volume and tends to °>^^® Poems 1920 distinct from the rest of Bliot*s poetry, Unlike Auden, he shows no interest in the relationship between men and animals as suoh, but only mentions animals or parts of animals in order to emphasise some aspect of the human condition. The men and women of the poems are constantly and uBmbiguously described as animal, and, with the possible ezeeption of the 'tiger*, the^lmages are always used to convey human degradation. The image of the ape makes the most frequent appearance. The creature is only hinted at^Bnrbank and Mr. Bliot *Q Sunday doming Service.' but dominates Sweeney Erect and Sweeney Among the nightingales 8 Gesture of orang-outang Rises from the sheets in steam. Pushing the framework of the bed And clawing at the pillow slip. « Sweeney straddled in the sun^ Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees , . Letting his arms hang down to laugh Furthermore, the image is not confined to Sweeney alone. Xn Sweeney Srect for instance there is Doris who Enters padding on broad feet and in Sweeney Among the Sfightingaies there is (1) Collected Poems, pp. 42-43. (2) Ibid., p. 57. 95. The silent vertebrate in brown and it is Rachel nee Robinovitch who Tears at the grapes with murderous paws. Zt is instructive to plaoe these images side by side with the few instances in the earlier poems when human beings are compared to animals. Zn Prufrock the speaker refers to himself as a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas and in Portrait he eaya And X must borrow every changing shape To find expression dance, dance Like a daneing bear. Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape. Even when the element of caricature and exaggeration in the Sweeney poems is taken into account, it is obvious that there is a great difference in suggestion between the chattering ape of the earlier poem and the orang• outang of Sweeney Breet. Zn Portrait, the speaker, conpoious of his feebleness rebels, unsuccessfully and mockingly, against the pettiness of bis life with a despairing imitation of animal vitality. But the ape merely, chatters and the boar merely dances, and the whole situation has the atmosphere of a charade - a feverish parlour - game played to fend off feelings of futility and helplessness. The imagery of the 1920 poems however, conveys the virility of the animal world. There is no 96. question of the characters playing at being animals, they have been metamorphosed into animals. The theme of Original Sin is sounded very strongly hero. Natural man, left to himself does not achieve a god-like freedom and dignity, but reverts to bestialityt a bestiality which has power to profane and destroy The epileptic on the bed 1^ Curves backward, clutching at her side These characters are not like Prufrock. The claws which 2 originally scuttled across the floors of silent seas , have turned into those which crumple and tear and the paws which mutilate*^. There is little suggestion of uncertainty or weakness. This is a civilisation which is depraved and corrupt rather than one which is gradually collapsing through a refined lack of energy. (The lengthened shadow of a man Is history, said Emerson Who had hot seen the silhouette ^ Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.) There is nothing uncertain or feeble about Sweeney. •Straddled* conveys Just the opposite sense. Besides being a blow at Emerson's sentimental optimism, the stanza (1) Collected Poems, p. ^3. (2) Ibid., p. 13. (3) Zbid., p. 57. {k) Zbid., p. kj. 97. postulates a positive force of evil, suggesting a notion of destructive pother that tni^t be a parallel ^ith Yeats* vision of the *rough beast its hour come round at last* slouching tovards Bethlehem^* In Yeats* mythology the 'rough beast* is a predictable stage of the pattern of life ..and history« but for Eliot human bestiality represents ah overturning of the natural order( a deliberate perversion of human nature vhioh involves self-destruction. In his Confeosiona. St. Augustine speaks of inan*s iniquity giving the lie to itself either by corrupting or perverting that nature which thou hast ordained, or by the immoderate use of things x^hich though hast permitted, or towards the use of thingB not permitted, by a burning in lust which is contrary to nature ....2 St. Augustine*8 use of the word *lust* entails more than the passionate demand for sexual satisfaction, but the most obvious manifestation of human lust takes place in the field of sexual activity and concupiscence has always loomed large in traditional Christian thought about sin. Consequently Bliot*s choosing to speak of human corruption in the terms of sexual depravity brings him close to orthodox Christian doctrine. (1) *The Second Coming* Collected Poems, p. 211. (2) Confessions, p. 83. In the sixteenth oenttary Anglican formularlea, the ninth Article of Religion speake of Original Sin as an ea..«. infection of nature -which doth remain, yea in thera that are regenerated { t^hereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek ^P»««>^4L tfhieh sotae do expound the t^isdoia, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire of the flesh is not eubjedt to the Laxs of Ood^. The Church o:^ Rome is more liberal in speaking about lust, and dratjs a finer distinction bettfeen the Fall itself and its inevitable results. Ooneupiscsnce, for example, is thought to be a result of the Pall and also, strangely enough, part of m&n*B nature. This is the decree of the Council of Trent, but individuals have expressed them• selves more strongly. St. Augustine in the last book of City of God olaims that In heaven there vill be none of that sexual ^ , desire i^hioh has been the cause of our dot^nfall . This attitude is too extreme to be orthodox, and in the fifteenth book he has even said that there is a natural and laudable shame of sexual contact tjith one towards xthom affinity adduces a reverential mcdeaty. Although the contact be for the purpose of procreation it is still lust, which, as t7e knov, makes even married people blush for shame3 (1) 'ij^ie Book of Common Prayer, ^irty Wine Articles (2) City of God, p. ^02. (3) The translatQr*s footnote should be observed. St, Augustine verges on heresy in the vietjs expressed here. City of God, p. 25^« 99. Xt is possible to argue that Eliot goes a good deal further than St. Augustine in his belief about the corruption of humanity. Thoughts of procreation never enter the minds of any of Eliot's characters. The suggestion of fertility in the phrase 'Ariadne*s hair* is vitiated by the obscenity of This withered root of knots of hair^ And it is ludicrous to think of Sweeney or Doris, or any of the others experiencing anything akin to shame at sexual contact. It is a sterile coupling, but one cannot fail to notice the power of this bestiality The sickle motion of the thighs Jackhifes upwards at the knees Then straightens out from heel to hip. There is physical force in the picture of Sweeney Jaoknifing upward or standing straddled in the sun. But it is a force that is entirely destructive. The images are images of cutting and breaking. In the later poem Sweeney Among the Nightingales. Rachel too, is given this kind of blind destructive power as she 2 Tears at the grapes with murderous paws i Because of the similarities which exist between Poems 1920 and Sweeney Agonistes it is a little strange (1) Collected Poems, p. ^2. (2) Ibid., p. 57. 100. to find Sliot employing no animal metaphors at all in the tvo fragments. Doris, admittedly, on one occasion does refer to Sveeney*s island as a 'crocodile isle*^, but the instance is an isolated one and of no real significance. The closest the poet comes to using the animal metaphor is in his referenoes to a 'primitive* state, savagery and cannibalism. But the use of the explicit, sustained animal metaphor is held off for a long time, only making an appearance again fifteen years later, significantly, not in the poetry, bfat in the first of the plays, Murder 2 in the Cathedral . But there is, in the plays, an attempt to provide a pattern of Atonement and restoration to complement the picture of depravity. This pattern is entirely absent from Poems 1920 or Sweeney Ae^onistes. Nevertheless positive depravity is recognised in these vorks in much the same vay that evil is recognised in the poetry of Baudelaireg and in a manner which parallels the reaction of the neo-orthodox theologians to the llbj^alism and /J^ optimism of late nineteenth century modes of Christian thought. Bliot verges on a Christian concept of Original Sin which differs radically from the Hulmean oonoeptions which tend to dominate the later poems• The pre- (1) Collected Poemsi> p. 126. (2) Collected Plays, pp. 41-^2 and k5. 101. occupation with the problem of Time, and man's limited capacity to find an order in personal life and human history is not the Christian doctrine of salvation expressed in different terms. Orthodox Christianity takes both a more serious view of the corruption of the world and a more confident expectation of its restoration to its real and former glory. 102. CHAPTER V Eliot's Poetry (z)i Fragments of an Agon 't.S. Sfliot is not a philosophical poet in the same sense that Dante is, for, despite the frequent apella- tion 'Christian poet', it cannot be claimed of him that any of his poems (emd certainly not the whole body of his poetry) rests upon a coherent philosophy in the way that Dante's work rests upon the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. There is as Helen Gardner claims, an 'essential unity' in his poetry but it is of a quite different order from that of Dante whose Divine Comedy, for example, aohieves a unity almost automatically by the very fact that it is built upon the self-consistent theological system of Aquinas. Helen Gardner in discussing the 'essential unity' of Bliot's work, claims that it arises out of '..... the integrity with which he ^liot7 has explored his own vision of life*^. It la thus an imaginative, rather than a philosophical or theological uxiity* and is not dependent upon the integrity of the vision itself. Nor would Bliot himself have regarded it (l) The Art of T.S. Bllot. p. 78. 103. as necessary that his poetry present a coherent philosophy* Kis remarks on the relation between 'thought' and 'poetry' in the essay Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Senega are sufficient evidence of his attitude to the intellectual endeavours of creative artists^. The philosophical Integrity of the work is of minor importance to Eliot, and philosophically ineonoistent attitudes are frequently S-l; forged into a unified poetic pattern throu^ sheer imaginative power. By oomparisonv 13,H, Auden, can be seen as a philoso• phical poet in the 'Dantean' sense. Although his poetry, taken as a whole, does not have the unity that Eliot's has9 it is rare to.find any single poem showing any intellectual inconsistency, mien the investigation of hie poetry is reaohedp it-will be found that this greater degree, of philosophical and theological consistency is often achieved at the price of imaginative integrity. Moreover the difficulty of Auden's poetry is frequently caused by the ideae themselves and his work all too often calls for ah intellectual exercise rather than an ef^^-rt' • imaginative response. From the poems of Eliot published before 1922, it is possible to see two considerably different beliefs about the nature of man emerging. On the one hand man (l) Selected Essays« pp. 126-li»0. 10k. is seen as a limited imperfect creature. Incapable of significant action, living a purposeless life in a disordered universe. And on the other, man is described as a morally depraved being, engaged positively in corrupting the world and his own nature acting in ways that can only be termed evil. Sometimes these views are expressed separately in individual poems, sometimes they are woven together as in Gerontion and Sweeney Among the Nifflhtlneales. The Waste Land and the two fragments Sweeney Agonistes are, respectively, extensions of the two earlier poems in many ways, emphasising with greater force the distinctive attitudes of their forerunners. Tfad two works resemble each other in that the theme of death is central to both, but differ from one another in their apprehension and presentation of it. Although there aro images of violence and passages suggesting corruption in The t?aste Land, the prevailing temper is that sot by Gerontion.. Life is described in terms of its negation - a futile and helpless subsistence. Sweeney Agenietee on the other hand takes up the mood of Sweeney Amnn^ the Nightingales and emphasises the wilful distortion and cruelty of existence, and in its own flippant style posits the meaningfulness of death. Both lives lead to death, but whereas the first ends in a erumbling to dust and oblivion (the sleep of winter), the second ends in 105. damnation. Zt has been said that the Sweeney of the two frag• ments boars little or no resemblance to the Sweeney of the 1920 volume'^. The character is olnimed as an entirely new creation. Instead of the 'apeneck' sensualist we are given the first of a series of dramatic studies, of exoeptionai htuaan boinge all of whom are out of tune with their surroundings 0 are more perceptive than their friends and associates, and are aware of some kind of obligation to act decisively in remedying a dislocated situation accepted by others as normal. Helen Gardner tries to dispose of Sweeney Agonistes by tacking it on to The Waste Lanel. P.O. Matthiesson and D.B. ^bnes treat > it only as the experimental forerunner of the plays. But the two fragments are important because they look two wayse. Sweeney himself is both a orudo, experimental version of Thomas Beckett, Henry Honchesney and Celia Coplestono, and a perceptive, articulate version of the original 'apeneck'. At a superficial level the connection with Poems 1*)20 can be seen in the characters themselves t St^eeney's society in Sweeney Agonistea is obviously identifiable (1) F»0* Matthiesson, The Achievement of T.9. Eliot. p. 159 The hero is so different a character from the *'apeneck Sweeney*' of the poems that Eliot might better have given him a different name. 106. with that of Sweeney Erect and Sweeney Among the Nightin• gales » Dusty and Doris, despite the new environment of a flat of their own, are clearly 'the ladies of the corridor'. The broadly ironic humour of these ladies who Call witness to their principles And deprecate the lack of taate^ finds easy,and.natural articulation in the conversation Dustyt ffell that's true. He's no gentleman if you can't trust him And if you can't trust him - » Then you never know what he's going to do . At a deeper level the fragments are connected with the earlier poems by a similar pattern of imagery. Ve are given frequent descriptions of death in teras of unnatural cruelty and horror. The subject of Sweeney Erect is ostensibly the sterility and bestial sensuality of sexual activity in a brothel, but this is given images of pain and violence. Sweeney himself has the appearance of someone who has been mutilated Slitted below and gashed with eyes,^ and the suggestion of the physical damage ho causes with his 'sickle motion from the thighs' is re-infcreed when he tests his ra^or on his leg, and is hammered home by (1) Collected Poems, p. k3o (2) Ibid6, po 119. (3) Ibldb, Po ^2. 107. the description of the woman on the bed. Although specifically referred to as an epileptic, this description nonetheless conveys the attitude of someone who has been injured or even killed. The idea of murder only hinted at here» is discussed at some length by Sweeney in Praaaent of an Agon. In between Sweeney Erect and Sweeney Agonistes there is the important little poem, Sweeney Among the nightingales. There has been a great deal of controversy about Eliot's use of mythological material in these poems of 1920 and ^weeney Among the nightingales raises the • problem in its most acute form. This is not a poem of simple contrasts and it seems more likely that the Sweeney incident should bo read in the light of the classical myth than that the Agamemnon story should be reduced to the squalid proportions of the oontomporary scene. Tho Agamemnon murder acts as a ' type * so that the Sweeney story becomes a contemporary version of the classical myth. The sense of degradation is suggested in the familiar *Hebraic* image Rachel nee Rabinovitch . Tears at the grapes trith murderous pawst But instead of Clytemnaestra slaying her huoband we are given the petty but vicious animal behaviour of modern (1) Collected PoemsB p. 57. 108. womeuihood-the heroic story of retribution and damnation in the ancient' world lo not offered merely as a pointed oontrast to the helpless triviality of.contemporary life. The two situations interact. A question mark is raised against the slgnlfioanee of the passionate actions of Clytemnaostra and Agamemnon And lot their liquid siftings fall , To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud . At the same time the presence of the myth does not leave the modern characters untouched. Because of this we are closer to the 'possibility of damnation' in Sweeney Among the Nightingales than in Prufrock or Gerontion. The worlds of Prufrook and the old man are self-enclosed. They act out their lives in a Qeemingless pattern which has no external reference. The actions of Rachel, Sweeney, the host, 'the silent man in mooha brown' seem also to be trivial and meaningless but they have the external referenoo of the aneient story. The contemporary scene may be a degraded version of the original situation but there is a link between them. T^at we await is the re-discovery of the myth - for the characters of the poem, the areoognitlon of guilt and damnation. Sweeney Agonistee becomes thus a dramatic fragment about an abortive search for guilt and damnation and it is the (1) Colleeted Poems, p. 58. 109 < beginning of an inconclusive struggle in Eliot to discover and express the meaning of the Christian doctrine of the Atonement! a struggle which reaches its climax in the plays. .Despite .the quotations from Dante*s Purgatory in Prui^rock and Other Observations. Eliot *8 early poetry does not have as its central theme *sin and redemption*, because» apart from ambiguous hints in Gerontion (made more explicit in the Sweeney poems), there is little suggestion that damnation has been apprehended. In his early poetry Eliot*s chief concern is the portrayal of * the ennui of modern life * s his vision of Hell comes later. It flares briefly in short passages and occa• sional allusions in The gaste Land, then more steadily and luridly in Sweeney Agonistes As has been said, Sweeney Agonistes is a play which has the problem of death at its centre« and at the beginning of the melodrama Eliot places two epigraphs which, obliquelyt suggest the ways in which the subject is to be considered. Northrop Frye has claimed that Eliot*& vision of evil, however» is seldom a vision of horror or violence, except off-stage, as in the crucifixion of Celia Copiestone in The Cocktail Party!. (l) T.S. Eliot, p. 52. 110. This la a strange remark to make for Murder in the Cathedral depicts evil in preeisely these terms of horror and violence^. Moreover the nature of Celia's death is pre-figurod, albeit in half-amused melodramatic tones, in the two fragments with which we are dealing. The first epigraph, from Aeschylus, is the appalled cry of Orestes when the Furies make their first appearemce. The shedding of his mother's blood has released these spectres of guilt which hound him to his 2' destruction . The theme of blood-guiltiness and eonsequent retribution receives fuller and unusual expression in Eliot's later play The Family Reunion where the Furies actually make their appearance. Wnt in The, Family Reunion, the Christian doctrine of the Atonement is involsed in the figure of Harry. There pan however, be no Atonement • without the possibility of damnation and it is this latter which Sweeney is seeking in hie crucial speech which grotesquely alludes to the murder of Clytemnaootra SweeneyI I knew a man once did a girl in Any man might do a girl in Any man has to, needs to, wants to Onoo in a lifetime, do a girl in^. (1) Collected Plays, p. 29o (2) It is true that the Furies are transformed later by the gods into agents of good and evil, but that is a much later development,and the note sounded here is the note of fear on the recognition of guilt, and the sense of Inescapable retribution that is to be enacted. (3) Collected Poems, p. I30. 111. Orestes knew th& significance of the deed he was called upon to perform and knew also the impossibility of refusing his 'vocation'. The intolerable situation in which he and Slektra found themselves could only be relieved by courting destruction at the hands of the avenging Furies. The situation of contemporary existence is equally intolerable and the man in Sweeney's story feels the same compulsion to be released by courting damnation. The world will at least end with a 'bang' and.not a 'whimper'* But the parallel ends there and the story is given a bitter twist. 'Between the idea/And the reality' the shadow has fallen, for the modem Orestes kills the girl and then tries to deny his action by keeping her in a bath of lysol. Ue fails to release the significant powers and so the deed fails to release him« life is reduced to futility again» and the distinc• tion between life and death - offered by the tumatural act of murder - has again been blurred He didn't know if he was alive , and the girl was dead If that was where Eliot had chosen to end his melodrama there would be some Justification for Helen Gardner's calling it 'a rather sterile appendix' to The Waste Land . for this 'living death' is the subject of all the (1) Collected Poems* p. 131* (2) The Art of T.S. Eliot; p. 132. 112. poems. It would seem then, that no advance had been made on the vision of Gerontiong that even the attempt at sin - described in terms of horror and violence - has failed. But the play does not end with this pessimistic identification of life and death. Instead there follows a maoabre and amusing, though possibly ambiguous, vision of hell and damnation. In dealing with the final chorus it is difficult to decide whether it is intended as an exaggerated gesture mocking man's inability to do anything slgnifleant or whether there is a suggefition of real horror You dreamt you waked up at seven o'clock and it'e foggy and it's damp and it's dawn and it's dark. And you wait for a knock and the turning of a look for you know the hangman's waiting for you*. The imago of the prison in 'the turning of a lock' echoes lines from The Uaate Land I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only Ve think of the key, each in his prison2. But there is an important difference in the use to which this image is put. In The Waste Land the speaker's recollection of the 'key' serves only to emphasise the fact of his imprleonment and powerlessness - we are back . in the self-enclosed worlds of Prufrock and Oerontion - (1) Collected Poems, p. 132. (2) Ibid.o p. 77o 113 < tsrhoreas in Fyagaeot Qg an Aaon tho possibility of release is suggostedo a strange release» a real deaths even perhaps 'the possibility of damnation'^, for this olosiag ohortts tfith its imago of the look and its insist• ent knookiog takes QS back to the Porter's soene in Mai^bath. vith its mention of *hell-gate' and *tho everlasting bonfire's a hideously ironio oomiaontary on the durder of Dunoan. The knocking here j however^ unlike the knocking in Pgaebethj indicates tho presence of tho meesehgers of HOIIB the agents of retributions the avenging Furies o Sathleen Raines It tfill be recalled, praised Bliot for restoring tho dimension of Hell to our naturalistic universe o Sweeney Agonistee for all its mocking flippancyo suggests in its imagery of horror and violence that a pit of great depth and real terror may lie Just bolov the surface of modern life, ^en this is realised one is close to the Ohristian vision of. human esistences aa it has been osproasedg not only tradition• ally but particularly in the 'neo-orthedos' theology of tho twentieth oentury. VkkO second epigraph to the melodrama invites the consideration of death in an entirely different tjay from (l) of* Sssay on Baudelairop Selected Essay» po U29» Ilk, that indicated by the quotation from Aeschylus. Although Christianity, unlike many of the Oriental religions« is not a vorld-denylng faith » it cannot afford to be since it believes in an incarnate Qod - there is nonetheless a strong tradition in its ascetical theology of a type of spirituality knotsn as the via negativaa a way of attain^ ing union ^ith the Divine t^hieh involves the doliborate detachment of the eoul froQ the love of all things that are not Ood. This attitude oan be traced back at least as far as Dionyiue jih^ Psoudo-Areopagito» z. neo->Platonic " h • csystio of the sisth century, and reaches supreme espression, in the Voet&rtck Churchg in the works of St. John of the Crosst And thus the soul chat has attachment to any• thing, however nuoh virtue it possess, will not attain to the liberty of Divine union^. This is the first use Qliot makes of The Ascent of Mount Carmel and the reference, by way of epigraph here, differs radically from the veiled allusions of Ash Ifedneaday and the extended references and quotations of • • 2 your ftuartete. Carol Smith has pointed out that Sweeney's (l) The ^orka of St. John of the Cross. Vol. 2, Ek. V, Gh. XZ^ p. 51* (a) T.S. Eliot's Dramatic Theory and Practice, p. 70. 115. Qurder-storsr is a grotesque version of St* John's injunctions about the necessity for the soul's detach• ment from 'created things'* and an even more obvious parody is the quickfire backchat which begins Fraament of Veil that's life on a crocodile isle, There's no telephones There's no gramophones There's no motor-carsl* Th9 soul is stripped here of 'the world' and the love of 'created things', but the result is not divine union, merely an increased sense of boredom Birth, and copulation, and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks The futility of humtm life becomes even more apparent -when the tawdry accoutrements of twentieth century civilisation have been removed. As in Baudelaire's vision, the human being, trapped in the sub-human round of 'birth, and copulation, and death' can only attain dignity by a recognition of good and evil and actively asserting one or the other. Sin, like Faith, offers a positive way oif escape from the intolerable condition of 'ennui'* In the light of the epigraph to Sweeney Aeonistes, the act of murder is ironically identified with that ultimate act of detaohihent from created things. In the Aeoent of Mount Carmel this act would result in (l) Collected Poems, p. 126. 116. divine unioni in Sweeney Agonistes the possibility of exactly the opposite state - complete severance - is suggested* But Eliot does no more than hint at the possibility and again demonstrates man's failure to make the final renunciation.. Sweeney AflgOniates has many faults - the imagery is often crude, the themes are badly integrated, there are sudden Jarring leaps in the dialogue, and the tone is frequently self-consciously flippant. But despite its flaws it remains an impressive work, and as a study in the poet's development towards an expression of Christian doctrine, it is more important than either The Uaste Land or The Hollow Men both of which far surpass it in poetic merit. It expresses vigorously, and sometimes with startling immediacy, beliefs about the nature of man which have scarcely come to the surface before. Both The gaste Land and Sweeney Agonistes can be said to contain the seeds of religious ideas which came to fruition in the later works. They both have the recurrent motif of death and birth, and they both deal with man's failure to discover the myth which will give order and meaning to his existence, but Fragment of an 4>fen consciously forges a link between the ideas of birth and death and those of guilt and damnation in a way that is barely suggesited by The Vaste Land. The 117. theological problems of the plays can be regarded as extended treatments of those raised in Sweeney Agenistea whereas the philosophical framework Pour Quartets grows but of the preoccupations Prufrock and The ^aate pan^t Consequently the religious ideas of the later poetry are further away from orthodox Christian doctrine than is generally supposed ^ Both plays and poems are decisive rejections of the liberal sensibility of his own background and of the nineteenth century, but neither group represents a return to the Calvinist theology of his own Puritan ancestors. Bliot's repudiation of the liberal Congregationalism of his upbringing went hand in hand with the renunciation of the country of his birth and the consequent aecepteuice of the Catholic religious traditioii in its most rigid English manifestation. Despite the emphasis on the sinfulness of man, it is the Catholic consciousness which pervades his later work, though it appears very differently in the poems and the plays. 118. (CHAPTER VI ^^iot'a Ppetry (3)1 Ash Wednesday and Four quartets. Ash Uednesday; was first published in 1930, though the second section of the poem, entitled Salutation, appeared in Saturday Review of Literature (December 192?) and Criterion (January 1928)^ shortly after the poet's baptism into the Church of England. Constructed on a framework of Biblical images, Dantesque allusions, and liturgical quotations, it is Justifiably regarded as Eliot's first specifically Christian poem, though the vision which it embodies is organically connected with that of The Waste Land. Having surveyed the devastations of modem civilisa• tion and individual human lives, Eliot begins the closing 'statement' of the The Waste Land with the half- despairing self-examination of the Fisher king I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me . Shall I at least set my lands in order? Re begins the first section of Ash Wednesday also with an image of a king and the same half-despairing, half- weary introspective questioning tone. (1) Donald Gallup. T.S. Eliot. A Bibliography, p. 9^. Part I appeared in Commerce. XV, (Spring 1928), and Part III in the same periodical XXI (Autumn 1929) (2) Collected Poems, p. 77. 119. (Vhy should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) Vhy should I mourn ^ The vanished power of the usual reign? ^nd the liturgical plea for peace which formally closes The Waste Land is echoed in the first section of Ash Wednesday and repeatedi with greater emphasis, in the last section 2 Teach us to sit still . Ash Wednesday may well be. a poem about conversion and the discovery of faith, but its tone is tentative and perplexed I we are not provided with the picture of a man whp. has; come. upon the means of salvation and the solution to the problems.of contemporary life, but with that cf a man grasping for a sy&lution which he believes to be there but ensure of the nature of that for which he. is reaching* Like The Journey of the Magi with its 3 deliberately indecisive ending , Ash Wednesday is a much more ambiguous poem than is usually believed. It is certainly a 'religious' poem, but the religious emotion which it expresses is of a very special order. It is natural to suppose that the whole poem grew around the original dream-sequence of the second section an(1)d iCollectes an extensiod Poemsn ^o fp it. 93s attitudes. . The dominant (2) JCbld., p. 103. (3) It is, I think a much more uncommitted poem than is usually believed. The result of the Journey is the experience of doubt and dis-ease. Collected Poems, p. 108. cf. F.R. Leavist New Bearings, p. 97* 120. images of this section are drawn from the latter parts of The Divine Comedy and the prophecy of Ezekiel. Hero, as in the dream sequence of the fourth part, Eliot presents an abundance of allusions in a highly-involved, consciously literary style. Par from being a 'definite feature of inferiority' as Edmund Wilson suggests^, this style expresses perfectly a religious apprehension which is known only intollectually, and not as a part of the poet's. emotional liiTe. It is not until Marina and Pour qtaartets that the vision itself is presented by Eliot as having been seen 'in the flesh'. Here in Ash Wednesday, the visions of Danto and Esokiel are something which the poet oaui in some measure, understand and accept as real, but has no personal experience of. The Joy and expectancy which characterise the climb up the mountain of Purgatory into ParadiejS in The Divine Comedy have little ^ place in the Litany of the second part of Eliot's poem and are not conveyed with any immediacy even in the nigh Dream sequence of the fourth which relies so heavily on the third stage of Dante's Journey. The ambiguous use of the word 'ends' in the Litany is an example of the irrepressible doubt which arises about the meaning of the vision of the Rose and the Garden. And after the reference to Dante's Euoharletlc Pageant (l) Axel's Castle, p. 109. 121. in the fourth part - a stilted and artificial image - we are left with the reminder of death in the resignation of Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew and the haunting liturgical phrase from the Salve Regina which faintly echoes the poems opening quotation from Cavalcanit's Ballata And after this our exile* The theme of resurrection to new life which is the main point of Bsekiel's prophecy gained from his vision in the valley of the bones s seems to be dealt with almost ironically by Bliot in the second part* There is no question here of 'bone coming to his bone'i of a new breath which will give them life* They remain in the desert chirping, *glad to be scattered' - accepting their separation in death 'We have our inheritance'. Although Helen Gardner is correct in pointing cut that the 'supple, flowing rhythm* gives to the 'disenchanted scene a kind of enchantment'^, Z cannot agree that it altogether dispels the sense of an irony which is neither oynibal nor bitter but merely resigned* Tho artificiality of the sequences remains, and needs to remain, so that the quality of the religious feeling can be truly apprehended* Zn the opening section the poet talked of (1) The Art of T*8, Bliot, p. 118. 122. 'having to construct something/upon which to rejoice'^. The visions of the bones and, more especially, that of the •earthly paradise* are part of that edifice which is being erected consciously and deliberately out of the •fragments that were shored against his ruins•• These sequences have then necessarily less poetic immediacy than the expreesionti of personal fnmblings and bewilderment. But the artifioiality of the oonstrttctions does not make the specifioally religious apprehensions any less profound* Moreover the poem is not merely deeply religious it is deeply Christiem in its vision. The use of liturgical uttera4<;^es are of prime importance here for they not only express the groping, uncertain attempts of the man at prayer but the nature of his eonversion and the type of his religious sensibility. P.O. ^tthiessen has claimed that the fourth section of the poem following directly after the tortuous ascent of the stair presents a glimpse of an earthly paradise whereby the poet evokes imagery that will express the emotions he feels in contemplating the doctrines of Grace and Redemption^. This is rather a bold statement and fails to convey the subtlety of the poem, but IMatthlessen is correct in pointing to the presenoe of those aspects of the (1) Collected Poems, p. 93* (2) The Achievement of T.S. Eliot, p. 118. 123. Christian faith which he refers to as 'Grace' and •Redemption'. Parts of Ash Wednesday do express, us no other poem by Eliot does, a convincing exploration of the two oardinal doctrines of Christianity - the Incarnation and the Atonement^. In the weaving together of Biblical allusion, liturgical quotation and personal response, Eliot eorabines in a single vision his two fundamental attitudes to mani the time-bound, limited creature seeking release and illumination, and the corrupt, violent creature needing purification and salvation. Xt is the fifth seotion of the poem which most Immediately conveys the poet/s Christian apprehension. ^ We are referred at its opening to the so-called 'Word Ghristology* of the early Church Fathers and especially to the great New Testament exponent of the Incarnation, St* John the Evangelist* The Prologue to the Fourth Gospel (in the beginning was the Word .. ^..) is adumbrated and reinterpreted here by Eliot. By means of direct quotation ('and the light shone in darkness'), and verbal echoes ('the word within/the world') together with 2 a punning play, in the manner of Launeelot Andrewes , on (1) It is true that in several of the Choruses from The, Rock Eliot attempts the expression of the meaning of the Atonement* (Collected Poeas pp. 173> 173* 179) But it is merely stated and not explored* (2) See Ninetv-Six Sermons. Vol. 1, pp. 85-101. 12k, 'word's 'world' and 'whirled', he recalls vividly the theological assertions of the Bvangelist whose purpose in this Prologue was the presentation of tho Zncamation in the terms of Greek philosophy ( "'Ap\ and Xoso& )• At the climax of the prologue comes the phrase 'and the Word was made Flesh'a paradoxical pronouncement of the,union, in Christ, of the divine and the human. And it ia this paradox which Bliot re-asserts and re-interprets in his image, (used again and again in the later poetry) of the still point and the turning wheel Against the World the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word^* Znterspereing the poetry at two points and closing this whole section is the liturgical phrase '0 my people, what have Z done unto thee'* It is significant that Bliot.'s littargical quotations are all penitential in character* Tho second half of the Ave Maria which ends the first section is a plea which recalls the sinner's helplessness* The words ending the third section are taken from the Communion devotions at the Mass and similarly express the sinner's need for grace and redemption (offered in the Blessed Sacrament)* The phrase from the Salve Regina in the fourth section refers (1) The Gospel according to St. John. Ch* Z, v. Ik, (2) Collected Poems* p. 100* 125. us to a context which contains a specific mention of the Fall - •To thee we cry poor exiled children of Eve', and the supplications from the Aniraa Christi in the final section repeat the already powerful note of repentance end sorrow^ But of all the liturgical allusions, it is the use of the single sentence) '0 my people what have I done unto thee' here in the fifth seetion which conveys most intimately Eliot *6 apprehension of the doctrine of the Atonement. The fiepreachea (from which the sentence is taken) belongs to the Good Friday Liturgy and consists of words put, in a quasi-dramatio way^ into the mouth of the prucified Lord* They are sung as the worshippers approach the unveiled crucifix to venerate, with a kiss, the figure of the Saviour, and there is probably no other ceremony in Christian worship which expresses so dramatically the sinfulness of man in their rejection of the Keesiah, and the grace of Ood offered in the Passion and death of His Son* Although there is no graphic portrayal of the corruption of the world and the degradation of man (apart from a few lines in the third seetion) in Ash Wednesday, as there is in the. Sweeney literature and Gerontion, a vision of Original Sin is conveyed, not only by these liturgical phrasos, but also by the frequent echoes of the Genesis account of the Fall. Apart from specific references to Eden ('The 126. desert in the garden the garden in the desert') and the fruit eaten by thejA^dam '('the withered apple-seed'), ^. their act of defiance is brought out in the repetition of the words 'chose* ? and 'oppose', and their beinish- ment from Bden in the image of the 'children at the gate'. There is however no suggestion of guilt or shcune and Bliot chooses to represent his apprehension of Original Sin in terras of disorder, frustration and lack of knowledge* Zn the line • •* *• spitting from the mouth the withered apple seed a sense of deep regret and bitter self-oontempt is expressed, but this seotion of Ash Wednesday is almost entirely without the cynicism and ironical detachment which characterises so much of the earlier poetry* The personae of the earlier volumes were masks which hid the poet as much as they revealed him but here there is little doubt about the poet's identification with those 'who walk in darkness** There is a new tenderness in the lines of the last two stanaas and a degree of direct personal expression, prevented from becoming embarrassing by the constant reference to the Christian liturgy* • *.• Will the.veiled sister pray For children at the@ite , Who will not go away and Cannot prayi M Collected Poems, p* 101* 127. These lines point forward to some of the speeches of the Chorus in Murder in the l^athedral. The predicament is the same. Like the children of Ash Wednesday, the women of Canterbury can only stand aroimd waiting, 'forced to bear witness*, unable to effect any change in their own condition, desperately needing the return and martyrdom of the Airchbishop, but resenting both^ and recognising their need only when It is thrust upon them, as it were, from outside* In y^urder in the Cathedral Eliot similarly draws together into a closelyrknit unity, apprehensions of both the Incarnation and the Atonementi Ash Wednesday. though less successful, is a pre-eeho of this. Helen Gardner says of the poem that The spiritual centre of these last three poems is the Incarnation, by which all time is redeemed!. This is undeniable but one needs to add that the poetry which explores the meaning of the doctrine in images like the figure of the woman (a combination of the Blessed Virgin, Beatrice, and the Church) is enriched, as we have seen, by penitential liturgical devotions which plead for the reconeiliation accomplished by the passion and Death of Christ. Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto thee It is significant that in these last three sections almost (1) The Art of T.S. Eliot, p. 120, 128. all reminders of the Atonement come in the fonn^ of stylised quotations and not original poetic images, but there is, nonetheless, a fullness about Biiot*s Christian vision in Ash Wednesday which is, absent from the later and much greater poetic achievement of Pour Quartets, pour quar;fce^s^* 2 According to Raymond Pre^n , the opening lines of Burnt gorton mi|^t well bo understood as a meditation in verse on certain words from the third chapter of the book of ^cy^esiaetes That which hath been is newt and that which is to be hath already beent and God roquireth that which is past?* Thi^ third chapter with its views of the cyclical movement of time is alluded to again by Bliot - much more directly and at far greater length - in the first movement of Bast Coker* He takes up the theme of the inevitable and, in itself, meaningless rhythm of birth, growth* decay, and death, and plays his own variations on it there is a time for building And a time for living and for generation (1) No attempt will be made at a systematic artical evaluation of the poerai the discussion in the following pages will turn upon the way Bliot approaches and presents the doctrines of Znoamation and Atonement* (2) Fjaur q^aytete Rehearsed, p. 9. (3) ^^thor^pe6^ yersion 8 Ecclesia^tes, Ch. ZZZ, v. 15. 129. The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of coupling of man and voman And that of beasts^. These allusions vith their echoes of the viorAs and phrasing of the Authorised Version are easily recognised. 3y means of direot allusion the poet re-creates *the Preacher*8* half-bitter attitude to life* and frequently in Pour Quarte}t8 the resigned impersonal tones of much earlier poems are recalledo His inverted version of the hopeful motto of Hary, Queen of Scots. Zn my beginning is my end is a reminder of Scclosiates* preoccupation vith death and the words of the seventh chapter Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof2I And the images of dust and decay together vtth the description of man's apparently unthinking participation in the purely physical life capture the spirit t»hich lies behind a great deal of the Visdom literature of the Old Testament* For the author of the Book of Eeclesiastes life is little more than a Jooimey to nothingnessi a gradual process of dying «fhich begins at birth* The greater part of the struggle to survive is described as (vanity* and M Pour Quartets* pp. 15-16* <2) Ecclesiaates* Oh* VU, v* 8. 130. nearly all human endeavour is disinlssed as *a striving after wind*. This is known* teohnioallyt as religious pessipism. A good name is better than precious ointments . and the day of death than the day of one's birth . To actsnowledge the pover of death and the vanity of life is to posoess wisdom* and to ignore it or evade it is to be foolish. The links with Platonic thought are obvious t and at the centre of this pessimism is a theory of determinism far closer in spirit to Greek thought than to Hebrew* and a far cry from the traditional Jewish affirmations about 7ahweh*s providential action in the history of the world. fiSan is seen as a fixed and limited being* resignedly accepting his lot and completely incapable of shaping or altering the events of his own life which have been fised in a pre-ordained pattern 2 congruous with the cyclical rhythm of the Universe . X knew that* whatsoever God doeth* it shall be for everI nothing can be put to it nor can anything be taken from it^. This deterministic attitude is hinted at in a metaphysical remark at the opening of Burnt Horton k All time is unredeemable . and is embodied in the concrete images of birth* pro- oreatiott* and death of the first movement of Bast Ooker. (1) EoeleeiaateB. Ch. VZI* v. 1. (2) cf. Rudolf Bultmann. Primitive Chriatianltv in its Contemnorarv SAt<:i«ff. n^. .^l.rZh ^ ^ ^ (3) 4aV« iSii^l^M^. Ch. Ill, V. Ik, (4) gour Quartets, p. J, 131. But Four Quart^ete taken as a t»hole is not a pessimistio poem> it does contain a vision of the redemption of time* thus continuing and fulfilling a process vhich began in Ash Wednesday. Few of Bllot*8 poems show a use of Biblical material that is as subtle and estenslve as the use of Eeclesiatea in Pour Quartets. The oblique references of Mr. Eliot's Sunday Meming Seryico are peripheral matters, and the allusions in yhe ^aste Land* though highly effective as 1 concrete iuagos , are isolated» and are left, deliberately, undeveloped* The birth narratives of The Journey of the Maai and A Bona for Simeon . are merely convenient pegs for the poet's private meditations, and those Choruses from The Hock tfhich make use of Biblical material 2 generally do little mox>e than precis the original * The closest parallel to the use of'the Bible in Pour Quartets is probably confined in the fifth section of Ash ffedneaday. •which has already been discussed* But Eliot's use of Beolesiastes in Pour, .Quartets is more complicated than hie use of St. John's Gospel in Aah ycdneeday. Not only are the references less direct and more extended, but the ideas themselves, besides being reproduced and reinterpreted, are commented upon and tested, and used (1) Collected Poeina t fhe Waste Land. 11. 20, 359. pp. 61, 75' (2) Zbid*, p. 168* of* Authorised Versioni The Book of I, Chs* I-IV* 132. as a starting-point for the working-out of a more satisfactory philosophy of life. The Conoludlng quatrain of the first movement of East Coker with its image of new life and fresh beginnings I am here ^ Or there* or elsewhere. In my beginning questions, for example* the religious pessimism of the preceding lines. But with its broken phrases, this questioning is only tentative* and the impression of man*s imprisonment in an inexorable cycle of growth and decay and the apparently meaningless round of birth, procreation, and death, at this point of the poem, remains. It is interesting that, in posing the central philosophical theme of Four Quartets. Eliot chooses to use material from that book of the Bible which barely touches upon the central themes of Hebrew-Christian religious thought. This Is not, perhaps, so unusual xihen one remembers that, despite his Protestant back• ground* Eliot is by training a philosopher and by inclination a classicist, and that the book Ecclesiastes is both the most deliberately philosophical of the books of the Old Testament and also the one which shows the greatest influence of Greek thought. Though it contains (l) Four Quartets, p. 16. 133. little trace of the influence of the Orook language itself, there can be no doubt that it is comparatively late in date and represents 'the reflection of the general mental atmosphere among cultured Jevs generated by the Greek spirit^^* . Hence its preoccupations are primarily of a philosophical natures the relationship between Time and Eternity, Free-vill and Determinism, and the meaning of finltude and death* It does not leave untouched the specifically religious problems of the relationship between Man emd Godt the creature and the Creator; the sinner and the all-HOly, but deals with them in a cursory, even off-hand way* Similarly Eliot, though writing quite obviously from a Christian consciousness of life, is, in Four Quartets, more concerned with the philosophical problems that troubled the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes than with the religious problems which lie at the heart of the great prophetic books of Isaiah and Jeremiah* It is significant too, that in his use of material from the New Testament, he confines his attention almost exclusively to the quasi-philosophical writings of 2 St. John . (1) Qesterley and Robinsons An Introduction to the Books of the Old Testament* p. 214. (2) of* The long metaphysical discourses of Jesus in Chs, 1^-17 of St. John's Gospel, and Eliot's employ• ment of the Greek 'Logos' concept peculiar to St. John. 13^* This tendency has not gone imnotieed by critics of the poem, and Sristiaii Smidt in his comment on the monism of Eliot*G Christianity makes the following remarkt Xt is a concomitant tendency ^n monl8ffl7 to see salvation for human beings in attaining to the divine Union, rather than a divine Atonement or forgiveness^. This does not mean that divine union is not a part of the Christian faith. Defined carefully it can be seen as the aim of the Christian life, but one which can only be attained by means of atonement and forgiveness. Usually* however* critics* both admirers and opponents of Eliot* tend to be rather vague about, or else avoid, the thorny problem of the poet's exact relation to Christian doctrine in Four Quartets or are content with sweeping generalisations about his orthodoxy which show either little knowledge of Christian teaching or careless reading of the poetry. R.H. Bobbins in his somewhat hysterical denigration of Eliot's work describes Four qaaytjBts in the following ways These last poems are deeply religious, and not only express Eliot's personal search for belief, but set out the formal doctrines of the Church^i Few critics are as emphatic as Robbins, but often there tmderlies a great deal of critical evaluation the assump• tion that ortliodox Christian doctrine is being 'set out* (1) Poetry and Belief in the Work of T.S. Eliot, p. I65. (2) The T.S. Eliot Mvth. pp. 33-3^. 135. in this long poem^. Even Pr. Genesius Jones under- empikasises the difficulties in his eager desire to make Eliot the most orthodox of Catholic Christians. Discussing the development of themes in Eliot's poetry, he says of The Hollow Men The death of Mistah Kurts, like the death of Phlebas, signifies here an emptying in preparation for a renewals a putting off of the old man, or perhaps one should say "the Old Guy"* The new man is specifically Christian^. And a few pages earlier he uses the same theological terminology in discussing the eventual 'transformation' of the 'old man' personified by Gerontion. Presumably the place of this transformation is Four Quartets. But the language of Pauline theology could hardly be less appropriate in an analysis of Eliot's 'doctrine of man*. Despite the Justice of many critics' claims that the poet is preoccupied with Original Sin , it has already been shown that Eliot's formulation of the doctrine resembles classical Christian formulations only in certain particulars. St* Paul's specific concern is the renewal (1) cf* Cleanth Brooks, The Hidden God, pp. 68-974 (2) Approach to the Purpose, p. 108. (3) Edmund t/ilson, fAxel's Castle). Babette Oeutsch (Poetry in Our Timel. D.E.a. Mflgwaii (The Poetry of T.S. Eliot) and grlatian Smidt (Poetrv and Belief in the Uork of T.S. Eliot) all mention this. 136. of life by Justification. The 'old man' of his epistle to the Corinthians is symbolised by the figure of the sinful and rebellious Adam, the 'new man' by the obedient and resurrected Christ* St. Paul, standing in the mainstream of Hebrew theology writes about those problems which troubled the prophets of ancient Israels unfaith• fulness, rebellion and Justification. Only occasionally does Eliot's apprehension and understanding of sin over• lap with St. Paul's. In his appraisal of the theology of primitive Christianity, Rudolf Bultmann cites a number of instances in which the contrast with prevalent Greek attitudes can most easily be seen and claims that the new Testament doctrine of man keeps close to that of the Old Testament It is also diametrically opposed to the Greek views on a further point. Evil is not merely a negative thing, a defect which will be put right later. It is something positivo, disobedience against God, rebellion, 'sin'^. Eliot, in much of his earlier poetry, and frequently in Four Quartets is closer to what Bultomann has called 'the Greek view' than the New Testament doctrine of man, though it must be admitted he does not express the Greek conception of becoming free from evil merely by 'education and instruction'. But he is, for the most part, concerned, like the author of Bcclesiastes. with the finltude of mani (l) Primitive Christianity in its contemporary setting, p. 216* 137. his limitations and imperfections2 his sense of the meaninglessness of his life and his desire to discover a pattern which will give life meanings evil is seen as . a negative thing^. St. Paul's theology restB upon his experience of Atonement wrought by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Eliot's theology has at its centre the Xncamation of the Divine, ^ere St. Paul sees man raised from the corruption of sinfulness and Justified by Christ's vicarious suffering, Bliot sees the 'redemption of time' by the union of the human and ^ 2 the divine in the incarnate Vord . But this is, almost certainly, a crude over• simplification of the rolatlpn of Eliot's thought to. Christian doctrine. Ro cannot be said to stand over against Christian tradition in Four Quartets, and he does not outline his thought in dogmatic statements. lie incorporates certain aspects of the Christian doctrine of man into a %rork which is a highly-complicated pattern of reflections and beliefs expressed by moans of images and rhythms.. The point of the comparison t^ith St. Paul is hot that Bliot mi^t be 'weighed in the balance' with the first theologian of the Christian Church and bo found (1) ofo T.8. Hulme, Speculations. p. ^7. (2) This should not be read in terms of a choice between tvo theological alternatives, one provided by St. Jolui, the other by St. Paul. The tijo apostles do not stand in opposition to each other, and for all St. John's emphasis upon the Incarnation, the central event in Christ's redeeming xsork. remains the Crucifixion and Resurrection. The Cross itself is described in terras of glory. 138. 'wanting', but that the sharp contrast will help to illuminate these particular emphases in Eliot's concept of man whiCh characterise Four Quartets, but we roust not be surprised if, as D*S. Savage said in 19^^i ^e find Eliot's beliefs about roan are closer to T.B. Hulme's 'theory of personality' than they are to classical Christian doctrine. Although the dominant theme of the poem is the union of the flux of time with the stillness of etemltys the discovery of the 'timeless moment' which gives mezuiing to all other moments (in Christian terms - the Incarnation), thesis aspects of human life which the plays struggle to express,,are not entirely ignored here. Of all the Quartets, East Coker is the one which approximates most Closely.to a poetic exploration of the Christian vision of. liiPe, and the fourth movement is an unambiguous meditation on the doctrine,of the Atonement. Here in the extended metaphor, of disease and cure, the knowledge of guilt and sin - the individual problems of Henry Monohesney and Oelia Coplestone - are presented as universal human conditions. This particular metaphor is, of course, one of the commonest ways of describing men's consciousness of sin and the wrath of God, and has been in constant use from the time of the pre-Exilio Psalmist to the nineteenth 139. century Kierkegaard^. East Coteer does not fail because of the conventional image Eliot has chosen but because of the way he handles it* Sickness and disease are by no means new in his poetry, but the metaphors have usually appeared with more contextual relevance than we find here* In an inexplic• able way, for example, these images in the early pooms are governed by, and subsumed into, the figure of the Fisher Sing in The Waste Land* Commenting on James Joyce's method of writing Ulvsses* Eliot said in 1923 that the use of myth was a way of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history^* In The ffaste Land Eliot employs a method similar to that of Joyce and achieves a similar result* By extension, it is possible to see the figure of the Fisher Sing - a symbol of the wasted order of modem ciyilisation - acting as a 'mythological' image for the poetry itself; giving a ehape and significance to those images of (1) The fifty-first psalm contains words which are echoed throughout the psalters 'Thou Shalt make me hear of Joy and gladnesss that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.' Sierkegaard refers to that 'despair', which is the lot of every man, as a 'sickness unto death*' (2) Quoted in Approach to the Purpose, p. 58. lUO. earlier poems - the old man of Gerontion, the epileptic on the bed'^, and even 'the evening spread out against the sky' - which merely indicate and suggest the panorama of futility and anarchy. And so The Uaste Land marks the end and fulfilment of a particular kind of poetic and imaginative development. Having been 'mythologised' by the figure of the Fisher Sing the images of disease could no longer operate as mere suggestions or indications of the frustrations and dislocations of human society. In The Waste Land. Bliot* in a sense* passes beyond the point of describing the society to itself. From The Hollow Men onwards the poems are required to bear a new weight i the poet's reflections upon the relationship between that which can be sensuously apprehended - the world - and that which caimot - the Divinei between Time, which is lived in and experienced directly, and Eternity, which can be known only in hints and guesses. And the image of disease* around which the whole of the fourth movement of East Coker is built* is both a self-conscious intrusion and an inappropriate vehicle if or bearing this weight. Eliot has already 'worked out' all the treasures that he could obtain from the ssrmbol. (1) Collected Poems, p. k^, (2) Ibid.* p. 11. Ikl. > This becomes apparent when the image is compared with that of the bell in the fourth movement of The Dry Salvages and that of the dove in the corresponding move• ment of Little Giddine. ^ese symbols are every bit as traditional in religion and literature, but they are handled in such a way that they are transfonned. Without destroying their original associations Eliot gives them a new,, and' in the context of the poem an even more powerful, and more personal meaning* But the metaphor in East Coker is used in the most obvious, almost banal, way^ There is an uneasy blend of seriousness and levity in the tone which seems to indicate a forcing of the issue* His ihability to incorporate the Atonement into his vision leads him to an overstatement of the doctrine conveyed by means of an elaborate metaphysical conceit The dripping blood our only drink. The bloody flesh our only foods In spite of that we like to think That we are sound i substantial flesh and blood - , Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday Good * It would be difficult to find, even in the most flamboyant devotional manuals, a pictorial representation of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist that parallels the crudity of the first two lines of this stansa* Horecver there seems to- be little reason for this kind of writing. The V images 'bloody flesh' and 'dripping blood', presumably M Poor quartets, p* 21* 142. intended to convey the physical reality of our contact with God hardly do Justice to the subtle doctrines of the Real Presence. There is a certain ironic cleveroess in the use of the words 'bloody' (as a swoar-word and as a reference to Christ's blood) and 'substantial' (as a common colloquial term and as a reference to Transub- stantiation) but apart from pointing to the closeness of the Christian faith with ordinary humaii lifer, little is achieved in these lines. Xn all probability, if the stansa could be paraphrased, we ehenld find that it presented an orthodox view of the Atonements man needing the grace of God and finding it in the memorial of the Calvaary sacrifice which is the Sacrament of the Eucharist. But an orthodox view is not the first requirement in a poem, where poetic conviction is achieved by a man's power and control over words. Zt seems as though Eliot's power and control, so much in evidence in the rest of PoiMP Quartets, falls when he approaches the matter of man's corruption and his need for Atonement. The last etanea of this movement is, admittedly, the worst in the poem but, with the exception of a few lines in the fourth etanea, the whole of this movement fails to be poetically oohvinoing. The allegory of the hospital is laboured and there is a clumsiness in the linest 1^3. • ****.. we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere. The use of the semi^arohaic word 'prevents' with its allusions to the collect for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity^ and. the Angustinian view of 'prevenient' grace is a little self-conscious and ecclesiastical, and its aDbiguity is robbed of force by the 'explanatory note's 'That will net leave us*' In Christian theology, the doctrines-of Original Sin and of the Atonement are inseparable, and it is strange that a man as Convinced of the meemingfulness and reality 2 of the doctrine of Origixial Sin as Eliot was , should be so nnoonvinoing in his attempt at presenting its necessary corollary* But his vision-of human life is such that he sees the 'answer* to man's problems resting in a doctrine of the Incarnation rather than the Atonement. Sristian Smidt is one of the few critics who deal with the theological aspects of Eliot's work, but in his • admiration for the poet tends to overlook some of his weaknesses and says, almost in an aside. (1) Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good workst through Jesus Christ our Lord* Amen* (2) Stephen Spender in his autobiography World Within World says that it was Eliot's belief in Original Sin which divided him so sharply from his older contem• porary (pp. 1^8 and 158)* Ihk, As far as Eliot is concerned, there is, of course no exclusion of the Atonement either from his opinions or from his poetry. Zt has significance* for instance* in the Good Friday poem "Bast Coker". But it is true that^^ the Xncamation seems to mean much more to him . 2 There are passages in the plays in which Eliot shows himself capable of expressing, with vigour and convict ion, a Christian doctrine of Original Sini a belief in the corruption of man* hie need for grace, and the Atonement wrought by Christ on Calvary. But the deterioration of poetic quality in Foiir (auartete when he turns his attention to what he obviously believes as a man, and is possibly capable of expressing as a dramatist, is a clear indication that he has failed to experience and explore it* as a poet. As X have already tried to show, Eliot's investigation and description of the human condition in the early poems does not give us a oarefully-worked-ont and self- consistent philosophy of Han. Iho various strands of his thought are developed in separate ways in his later work. So that while the expression of a belief in the Atonement makes an appearance^ in the plays. Four Quartets concentrates almost exclusively on the meaning of the Incarnation and offers the most important reasons for disagreeing with those critics who, like Edmund tfilson. (1) poetry and Belief, p. 158- (2) Collected Plays, pp. 4l-42| pp. 73-74$ p. 82) p. 169. Ih5. claim that *hla religious tradition has roachod hlia by «ay of Boston.* D*B.8. Maxwell booes closer to the truth tfhen he tries to place fillet In the ranks of the Jansenlsts^t but here the resenblanoe consists not so much In a similarity of belief about the sinfulness of Man as in the fact that both Bllot and the Jemsenlsts talk about Original Sin. from tvlthln the framework of the Catholic Churoh. And this Is a fact of some Importance. Not only are many of his images and allusions ones which are 2 drawn out of a Catholic consciousness , but the philoeophlcai themes of Pqytr Quartets and its inslst^ce upon the Incarnation are things which find a place in the Catholic tradition much more easily than in a Protestant one. Ve have already noted Relnhold Niebuhr*s criticism that Uellenistio Christianity and certain strains of the Catholic tradition subordinato all other problems to the time-eternity issue t and it is with this strain that the author of Four Quartets must be identified, hence the ease and eurenoss with which the book of Hellenistid Judaism - Eeelesiastee » is woven into the testure of the poetry. (1) -The Poetry pf y.S. Eli9^. pp. 161-163. (2) The use of Dante and John of the Cross, the 'Catholic* Caroline Divines of the seventeenth century, liturgical phrases, and the frequent references to the cult of the Blessed Virgin Elary.. Ik6. But Beclesiatoa is not the only religious book dealing with the *time-eternity* issue that Bliot treats so extensively. There is the use of the Bhagavad-Gita in the third part of The Dry Salvages. The resemblance of much of the teaohing eontained in this * gospel of India* to *the dualism and pessimism of Greek thought *^ is obvious. There is the same« though never as clearly stated* distrust of the phenomenal vorld, and the same belief in (the spark of divinity within the soul* x»hioh enables every man to (identify himself vith the spirit 2 and therefore vith the Divine Ground* , and the same teaching about man's desire to lose himself in an identifioation with the Principle of Being. But Bliot is no Hindu 6age» and the poetry of The Drv Salvages is not a paraphrase of the four fundamental doctrines of the Perennial Philosophy. Zt is true that certain attitudes expressed in the Bhagavad Gita (namelyp as regards the nature of human action and the relation of the present moment to the past and the future) make their appearance, but they have been trcutemuted by the poet's own imagination into images «hieh» unlike those of the * Atonement* move• ment of Bast Coker. both convince us of the integrity "vith which the poet is exploring *his otm vision of life* (1) Hiebuhr, Vol X, p. 138. (2) The Bhagavad Pita, transl. by Prabhavananda and Zsherwood. Introduction by Aldous Huxley, p. ?• 1^7. and also startle us into a re-assessment of our own. In the context of the extended image of human life as a Jouraey, he uses that strange feeling of suspended animation which often comes to travellers, to suggest the momont *in anxS out of time* and quotes exactly the words of Srlshna to Arjuna on the battlefield} Here between the hither and the farther shore ^ile time is withdrawn• consider the future And the past with an equal mind. At the moment which is not of action ot inaction Tpu can. receive thiss ^on whatever sphere of being mie mind of a man may be intent At the time of death" - that is the. one action (And the time of death is every moment) /fniich shall fructify in the lives of others: And do not thiJi^ of the fruit of the action Pore forward^. Here, under the abstract terms of Bastem religion the central theme - the meaning of growth and decay and the passing of Time - is soundod again. But we would not be pz'epared to accept the blend statements i (And the time of death is every moment) had we not been warned of their approach by the images of *the moment in the rose-garden* and *the still point* and the * ragged rock in the restless waters*. All these images are bound up, as is the * existentialist* statement about the time of.death being every moment, with Bliot*8 presentation of the Incarnation. (1) Pour Quartets, pp. 30-1. 148. The Incarnation is that event which gives meaning to the pipocess of growth and decay and the passing of time. It is that moment *both in and out of Time* which redeems^ what in the first movement of Burnt Horton is called Unredeebiable - Time itself. Here the impossible union Of spheres of existence is actual. Here the past and the future , Are conquered» and roooncllod , Although Bllot suggests that the time-process is an enemy which has to be overcome» he nevertheless from this point on* parts company wlt^ the Eastern religions, tfltereas both Hinduism and Buddhism teach the possibility and doeirabillty of achieving divine knowledge and complete union by *dlreet intuition*, Christianity is rooted in the fact of the Incarnation, the Word made Flesh, denying the possibility of divine union apart from the worship of the *0od made man*. The created order becomes thus, in a real sense, the mediating vehicle of the Divine. The timeless moment for Bliot is consequently a moment in time, and his acceptanoe of this kind of union with God is conveyed by the particular Images which ho chooses for describing the apprehension of this timeless moment. There are a few occasions (such as the one cited above) on which Bliot states directly his grasp of the meaning of (1) jfftur quartets, p. 33. Ik9. the Incarnation, but to repeat what he himself has said, it is not the point of poetzy to persuade us of the truth of what the poet believes, but to indicate what it feels like to believe. The direct statements about the moaning of the Incamation would be insupportable without the images whifsh convey the way in whioh it is apprehended. The first movement of Burnt Norton describes the experience in the terras of an • Alioe in Wonderland * remembrance of childhood in which 'reality* and * fantasy* merge into one another as in a particularly vivid day dream^* The moment when the lotos rose, quietly, quietly. The surface glittered out of heart of lights, was a moment not understood at the time, but is now recalled with associations of sweetness and freshness. The image of the children in the garden for the leaves were full of children Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. first used in New Hampshire in 1933» appears again in the last few lines of ^ttle Gidding and conveys the innocence and spontaneous Joy of this moment - a moment which becomes meaningful only much later. But the meaning of the experience is not directly stated (1) The confusion of *appearance* and *reality* here is of a quite different order from their confusion in Prnfroek and Other Observations. The disappearance of the usual boundaries of the external world results, not in bewilderment and the despondency, but in enlightenment and Joy. (2) yopr quartetq, p. 8. 150. I can only say^ there we have beeni but I cannot say TTherel. Similarly the cluster of images at the close of the third movement' of Burnt gorton conveys only the apprehension of the meaning of an experience, not the meaning Itself But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden. The moment in the arbour where the rain beat. The moment in tho draughty church at smokefall Be remembered ...... ^ Bllot writes with all the power of a great Imagist poet here. The Images are all dearly-visualised, concrete Images, awakening in the reader the proper response not only because of their sensuous quality, but because they have been used before, and, one feels, will be used again and again, and bring with them every time the associations of their other contexts. The images of the earlier poems somehow reach fulfilment in Four Quartets. These are Bliot*s *spots of time* in which the whole pattern of life is, for an instemt, perceived. The gardens of Ash Wednesday. The Pamilv Reunion, and numerous other poems become one with the rose-garden here. The moments of painful and unsatisfactory love in La Figlia Che Planee and The Waste Land are recalled and subsumed, under the moment in the * arbour where the rain beat*. And (1) Four Quartets, p. 9. (2) Ibid., p. 10. 151. the experience in the *draUghty church* recalls and redeems the experience in the * ruined chapel* of The Haste Land. How exactly each of these moments was experienced is left unsaid. They might suggesti an experience of love in youth or maturitys a mystical experience. But whatever they do suggest, the actual experiences themselves are somehow inessential, for the sensuous immedlaey of the descriptions and the associations which duster around the images enable them to convey the experience of certain moments of heightened awareness when the whole of life seeimed to have a meaningful pattern. Perhaps, as in James Joyce's 'epiphanies* it is suggested that the whole of life seems to be contained and experienced in that one moment* The Zncamation is the crown and universal type of all these individual experiences* That moment when the ^ord became Ploeh was the moment when the passing of Time, SLUd the cycle of growth and decay, had no meaning, for all time - Past and Putnre - was contained in that Present and all life was consummated in that Bvent^. Here* the intersection of the timeless moment Is England and nowhere. Never and always^. (1) of* Xf.H. Auden's lines at the close of A Christmas j^ratorio. Remembering the stable where for once in our lives Everything became a Tou and nothing was an It. Per The Time Peine, p. 12k, (2) Pour Quartets, p. 37o 152 < It is significant that, in the passage which has been imder discussion, there is a process of increasing conoretisatibn in tho images as they are presented. The three moments are placed in a scale of increasing detail and consequently of Increasing intensity. From the ffiOf^eifit of childhood vaguely remembered there is an advance to the moment of maturity vividly recollected. This process runs counter to the movement of the poem (Four Quartets) itself ,.'Wbieh begins from an experience ot a summer visit to a country home and ends with the recollection of the historical setting of a religious community, ^rom the individual experience, the universal meaning is known and applied. But the individual concrete experience is of the greatest importance. The sensuousness and ooncroteness of Eliot's imagery are not merely methods of conveying an experience of God which, in the words of the Bhagavad Git a is by 'd.ireet intuition*, but of asserting that the experience is somewhat tied to the setting itself (*the draughty church*), the material world in which it is experienced and through which it is mediated But only in time can the moment Be. rememberedI involved with past and future^. M Four Quartets, p. 10. 153. There would be no timeless moment apart from the rose- garden and the arboUr and the draughty church, even though these act primarily as images for poetic communication. Unfortunately, Bliot is not content to rest there with this presentation of the Incarnation and he ends the second movement of Burnt Norton with a metaphysical pronouncement which nearly destroys the effect that has been built up to a climatic expression in three sudden visual-images.. Only through time time is conquered. Up to this moment, the images in the movements have all suggested that a miaaning oan be given to the passing of time and that a pattern can be discerned in the flux of growth and decay that constitutes physical life. Time is not an enemy to be overcome but a phenomenon to be understood, something to be 'redeemed'. The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars Ascend to summer in the tree^ 'RiQ mention of 'the dance' at once suggests something patterned and ordered, but at the same time spontaneous and vigorous* and the image of 'the stars', repeated with a greater emphasis in the last line of this little section* while increasing the suggestion of patterned movements adds a note of serenity in its echo of Dante's U) Po^r Q^a^tpts., p. 9. I5h. line at tho very end of the Hell^ Bliot does here, what Yeats has done in the last stanza of his poem Among Schoolchildren. He unites the image of the dance with another imago of life and vitality - the tree. Ascend to summer in the tree We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf Although there is not the same:affirmation of the value 2 of physical life in Bliot as there is in Teats , there is still the suggestion that our movements and the trees* are connected and that if we are to discern the pattern of life we cannot withdraw from it. We cannot, in other words, discover the meaning of the time process by seeking to escape from it. If Frank Eermode is correct in his interpretation of the Dance Image-', Bliot*s use of it is peculiarly appropriate, and in the following section he binds the images of the tree, the dance, and the wheel into a complex, and almost unanalysable, whole. According to Kermode the dance or dancer operates as a symbol of something which is both out of the flux of life and yet •uniquely alive*. Consequently it is closely analogous to *the still point* which is at the centre of a wheel - (1) The Divine Comedyt Hell. Canto 3DCXIV, and thence came forth, to look once more upon the stars. (2) Yeats. Collected Poems, p. 2kk Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. (3) The Romantic Image, pp. 70-79. 155. itself unmoving and yet the cause of all movement ('the bedded axle-tree'). Action and contemplation, movement and stillness, time and eternity are united in the lines at the still point, there the dance is^, But the images of this section gather meaning also from Charles Williams' novel The Greater Trumps in which the dance of the Tarot figures symbolises the whole of life. In this dance the key-figure is that of the Fool who moves around the pattern with such rapidity that he appears to be standing quite stills All the other figures revolve around him. He is everywhere and nowhere. If there were no Pool there would be no dance ...... Except for the point, the still point. There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. This section re-iterates in a lees concrete and more obviously paradoxical way the ideas of the previous sectioni ^There is only the dance'. There is no escape from the wheel, there is only the discovery of the 'still- point f| only 'in time' can the 'timeless moment* be experienced. But the discovery of the 'still-point' means also the discovery of the pattern, and the experience of the 'timeless moment', the 'redemption' of time. After this profound meditation on the meaning of the Incarnation - a meditation in which even the Buddhist symbol of the wheel is transformed by the poet's insistence (l) Four Quartets, p. 9. 156. on the importance of a life lived in time ('there is only the dance*), it is disturbing to find Bliot closing the movement with a statement which, theologically, denies the Zncamation, and, poetically, destroys the sense of the affirmation of life which has previously been created. The *conquering* of time and the •redemption* of time are two entirely different concepts. Bliot betrays here (and later in yhe Dry.. Salvages and Little G±dA±n^) an ambiguous attitude to life in time (paralleled by his ambiguous interpretation of the doctrine of Original Sin) and an unsureness about the meaning of the Incamation, together with a suspicion of the physical world which is closer to an Eastern or Greek view of life than it is to a Christian. This has led Kristian Smidt to contend .... that Eliot*s supreme visions are not concretely and speeifieally Christian. They are as closely akin to those of Oriental as to those of European mystics^. And even Helen Gardner has difficulty in 'explaining away* the introduction of the Krishna passage in The Dry Salvages. for as she correctly points out it is precisely in their-view of history and of the time process that Christianity and Hinduism arc most opposed^. (1) Poetry and Belief, p. l60. (2) The Art of T.S. Eliot, p. 173 n. 157. But Eliot*s affinity with Eastern philosophy must not be exaggerated, for it is the Western Buropeanised sensibil• ity of the poet that dominates the poem. Moreover it should be recognised, as Reinhold Niebuhr has been quick to point out, that in the writings of individual ascetics and mystics of the Catholic Church^ there have been occaisional eruptions of *dualism and pessimism* which the Church has chosen to condone, or at least tolerate. St. John of the Cross might be accused of raeuiifesting attitudes alien to these, and Bliot uses St. John*s writings extensively. However, it must be stressed that wherever an upsurge of dualism has taken shape as an evangelistic movement it has been suppressed with vigour, 2 and frequently with cruelty . A Church which has at the heart of its Gospel, a belief in God made Man, Eternity entering Time, cannot tolerate within its framework a party which sees existence in time as an imprisonment, and the material order as evil. *The world* that the writers of the New Testament demand that Christians should renounce is not to bo understood as the created order, for that is the theatre of God*s activity, but its perversion, and time does not *have a stop* - it has an *end*, a goal and (1) e.g. Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. St. John of the Cross. (2) The manicheeism of the Alblgenses, for example, was condemned by Councils at Rheims (ll48) and Verona (1184), and finally by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)* These condemnations resulted in the so-called Albigensieuk Crusade in which the heresy was crushed by military force. 158. a pattern. It could also be claimed that the advocates of the Via Wegatlva. despite some of their wilder utter• ances, do not have as their aim an escape from the world but from the inoradicablo sinfulness of man. Even St. John of the Crose^whosc demand that we should *divest ourselves of the love of created things* seems closer to Buddhism than Christianity^ is not inspired fundamentally by a desire to bo free of the world and the timo-process, but of sin and its results. Whore the Buddha advocates complete detachment, St. John advocates the most 2 passionate attachment to God • Bliot has occasionally been accused of displaying a Puritan revulsion from physical life. In fact this is seldom the case. Though a Puritan in manners ho always, like T.E.- Hulme, writes from the background of the Catholic faith^. So that throughout his poetry his (1) In his introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita Aldous Huxley quotes Abbot Chapaan*s dismissal of him as *a Buddhist*. (2) In the course of a lecture on the mystic in 1932 E. Allison Peers remarkeds "Surely here is the complete apologia for complete detachment - a degree of perfection attained, not by withdrawal from the world of his day, but by *suffering and battling with the actual facts of life*. St. John of the Cross, p. 32. (3) of. Kristian Smidt, Poetry and Belief, p. I6h, 159. attitude to the physical world is much closer to that of the Catholic ascetic than that of the Puritan preacher^* Although there are moments in Four Quartets when it seems he comes perilously dose to dualism, he manages to avoid the pitfalls and whatever mistrust of tho world of the senses his faintly puritan upbringing may have bequeathed him, it ds absent from his . poetry except in statements about time which both he and T.B. Hulme seem to have been obsessed with and demanded freedom from. In The Dry 8alva<^8 there are the lines Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled, (The conquering oomes first it must be.noticed, and is more heavily stressed). and right action is freedom From past and future alsb^. And in Little Gidding existence in time is again described as imprisonment •••• This.is the use of memory For liberation - not less of love but expanding .Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the future as well as the past ....3 It seems, on the one hand, that Bliot looks for the *redemption* of time, and, on the other,. escape from time. (1) The most obvious example is to be found in Ash Wednesday. The portrayal.Of growth in grace by . spiritual discipline and strict submission to the Church is hardly one which would bo acceptable to a Puritan sect. (2) Four quartets, p. 33. (3) Ibid., p. kq. 160. The *reoonciliation* of past and future in The Dry Salvages seems to have little connection, mentioned as it is in the context of *victory*, with the great image of * reconciliation* in the second movement of Burnt Norton Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars And it is this attitude of negation and denial whioh contrasts so strangely and inexplicably with the affirma• tion of life in time conveyed by images like the *danoe* and the *tree*; and not only by sensuous imagery, but in quasi-philosophical statements likei See, now they vanish The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, , To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern And above all perhape in the quotation from Mother Julian of Norwich! *Sin is Behovely*, the effect of which is much more subtle than, for example, Raymond Preston makes out Even *Sin is behovely' if we profit by what we see is evil - by rejecting the evil^. The context makes it quite clear that *sin* is not merely edifieatory. We are reminded of St. Paul's saying of Jesus .Christ - He 'became Sin' for our sakes^. In the (1) Pour Quartets, pp. 40-4l. (2) Four Quartets Rehearsed, p. 59* (3) The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Ch. V. v, 21. 161. Inoamation the t»hole pattern of life la transfigured - sin Itself has been tranefoxwed. The effect Is very similar to St* Augustine's eoatatlo, paradosloal utterance 0 oerte neoessarltis Adae peooatunit quod Chrlstl oorta delotum estI 0 fells onlpai quae talemp ae tantum meruit habere Redemptoreml^ The x^solutlon of the problems that besot the personae of the early poems Is to be found here In Pour Quartets. The conflict between appearance and reality Is resolved, the disordered events and disparate ezperlences are given patterns the oyole of grovth and decay Is given a meanlngi but one venders vhether the guilt and horror Tfhleh llo beneath the surface boredom and cynicism of Sweenev Agonlstea have been duly considered and Incorporated or merely passed over. The latter seems to be the case. This brief examination of the doctrines of Incarna• tion and Atonement in Pour Quartets Is not. In any vay, intended to be censorious. Eliot le a poet not a theolo• gian or a teacher, and orthodoxy, as such,is incidental to poetry* But it seems that In Eliot's tfork orthodoxy and poetic quality do bear some relation to each other. As a Christian poet his faith seems to revolve, almost exclusively, around the doctrine of the Zncamation, so (l) Praeoonlum Pasohale. Hissale Romanum. 162* that the poetry beeocies forced and all^tly sensational \ihen it has to exprees an apprehension of Atonement. And his ondcrstanding of the Zneamationf though brilliant and penetrating in many vayst shovs oontradiotions and confusions that are reflected in the poetry. Eliot is undoubtedly one of the great modern poetsi but the popular conception of hici as the Christian poet par cxcellenoo is hardly juetifiable^. The essential Christian experience and vision are frequently conveyed more accurately» though, lees forcefully, by poets tihose putpat is more limited in range» like Gerard Hanley nopkins and V«H. Auden. (l) of. eieanth Brooks. The Hidden God, pi 68. 163. I . II O^HAPTER VII Eliot's Poetic Orana Tuo months before the first produotion of his play Murder in the Cathedral T.S. Eliot contributed an article to a symposium entitled Faith that Illuminates in which he affirmed •••••• that the whole of modem literature is corrupted by what I call Secularism* that it is simply unaware of• simply cannot under• stand the meaning of the primacy of, the supernatural over the natural lifet of some• thing which I assume to be cm* primary concern^. Xils detestation of * secularism *, a logical development of his earlier reaction to ^humGuaism' and 'romanticism*, appears with great frequency in the prose work after 19271 and the effort at conveying (the meaning of the primacy of the supernatural order* Is evident in all of 2 the later poetry and the plays . At this basic level both the plays and the later poems can be said to be identical -> in content and intention they are deeply and obviously religious. As the puz*pose of this study is the (l) Reprinted tander the title *Religion and Literature* la Selected Essays, pp. 388-5oiT (3) Old Possum's Book of Praotical Cats might be excluded. 164. investigation of the religions ideas of Bllpt*s poetry, a thorough examination of the plays cannot be undertaken, but they cannot go unraentloned as certain basic Christian themes appear to offer significant parallels and contrasts \fitb the religious ideas that are explored in the poetry. One of the constant preoccupations in Eliot's life and work vas that of the soaroh for order and purpose. In the early poems it is the fragmentary, disordered nature of human experience that is most vividly portrayed. A sense of degradation and corruption sometimes makes itself felt, as well* but it is primarily the individual human being's inability to discover an order, a meaningful pattern in existence, that is emphasised. The Imagistio technique proved the ideal means of representing this 9orId of unconnected perceptions, while the use of mythical material enabled him, as it had enabled James Joyce in Plvaseab to give coherence to his presentation of the chaotic world and impose upon the events described, a significant pattern* Kis attitude to History, his naturalisation as an English citisen, his fervid advocacy "^of thd value of tradition, and his entry into the most authbx*ltcurian branch of the Established Church all point to his fundamental desire to discover the meaningful pattern and his own place in it. The search, in the final analysis, was for the supernatural 'event* which 165. would draw all other, apparently separate and arbitrary, events into a coherent and apprehensible pattern. There can be little doubt that he did discover it although he still speaks of the necessity for *explora- tion* in Fot^r Quartets and uses the theme of the iquest* frequently in the plays^. The locus of the discovery was the Christian Church and nearly every work which follows For Launcelot Andrewes (l927) ie haunted by the Christian vision. Unlike Dante, however, Eliot seems unable to communicate, either in the poetry or the plays, that vision in its fullness. I have already tried to show that in Pour Quartets there is a failure to realise, in poetic terms^ the meaning of the 'event* of the Atonement, and even the profound exploration of the Zncamation is occasionally marred by a strange ambivalence to life in Time. The plays tako much further the attempt at *..... finding methods to, convey tho * reality* of the Christian explanation of the world, and the validity of. Christian values for society' , but Wurder in the Cathedral is the only one in which Eliot brings together, and manages to hold together, the two fundamental doctrines of the Incarnation and of the Atonement* (1) Harry, Cella and Colby iall have Journeys to make and goals to aohldvo. (2) Carol H. Smith. T.8> Eliot's Pramatle Vheorv and Practice, p. 35. 166. Although there are a great many similarities betweian aurdey in the Cathedral and Burnt Horton (which was published a ye^r after the play), the play has also important connections with earlier works like Poems 1920 and Sweeney Agoniates which, significantly^ the first Quartet does not* It is a play which is ; deeply concerned with sin* its oonsequenoes in man's life and his ultimate redemption, and I have argued that the fully developed sense of sin -> involving guilt and corruption - is expressed most forcibly in these earlier poems. Giorgio Slelohiorl, in his discussion of tho two Fragments, suggests by implication a resemblance between Sweeney Agonistea and Murder in the Cathedral. •••*,. the modem Samson is the shady hero of Eliot's earlier poems, the ape-like man oppressed by a sense of guilt, so very different from that of the Biblical hero, but in some way his equivalent, since the motive of action in our age is no longer the feeling of having a mission, of leading the people on.the path of Ood and guilt, or sin, can only be under• stood in terms of a sensational crime story^. It Is interesting that Eliot should chooso as a title for his first play one which automatically suggests the 'sensational crime story'. Thomas Beokott is also an equivalent of 'the, Biblical hero' suffering his own (1) The Tightrope Ualkors. pp. 109-110. 167. Agenda but unlike Sweeney does not himself feel oppressed by a sense of sin. litis last is transferred to those for whom Beckett dies - the women of Canterbury. Again we find death at the centre of the playi it is the only means by which release can be obtained and purpose discovered, in Sweeney Agonistes it is suggested in the Jocosely macabre lines Any man has to, needs to, wants to Onoe In a lifetime, do a girl in2. In Murder in the Cathedral it Is aetually performed on the stage. In Sweeney Aaonistes. however, the device of murder falls to give release from the intolerable human round, whereas in Murder in the Cathedral, the discovery of the pattern of life by the perfected victim himself, and his willing acceptance of his destiny, turns mere killing into the atoning eacrifioe of martyrdom. : For wherever a saint has dwelt, wherever a martjrr has given his blood for the blood of Christ, There is holy ground^, A belief in the reality of Atonement and redemption is logically dependent upon an acceptance of Original Sin and its consequences - separation from God and disorder (1) The definitions provided by Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon convey the Idea of a life-and- death struggle or conflict. (2) Collocted Poems, p. 130. (3) Collected Plava. p. 53* 168. and corruption of the natural world. In Eliot's early work (pre-1922) the poems fell roughly into two categories those like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Portrait of a Lady which emphasise the fragmentary, unreal, disordered nature of human experience, and those like Geronti|On» Sweeney Erect, and Sweeney Among the Nlfl^htlngalea which convoy also the idea of degradation and eorruption. in the Sweeney poems the animal metaphor is used to suggest this degradation and the same device appears in Murder In the Cathedral. In the long speech of the Chorus which follows Thomas's first confrontation with the knights, a series of intensely sensuous images describes humanity's descent into bestiality and the gradual identification of human life with emimal subsistence. I have lain on the floor of the sea and breathed ;With the breathing of the sea-anemone, swallowed with the ingurgltation of the sponge, i have lain in the soil and criticised the worm ...^ D.B. Jones commenting on this passage writest By Inflaming the animal part of Han and causing it to dominate the angello part. Evil turns the order topsy-turvy at its key-point. Man turns his back on God and becomes mere animalt for when he forgets the fatherhood of Ood, he has nothing left but his brotherhood with the beast (1) Collaoted Plays, p. ^2. (2) The Plays of T.S. Eliot, pp. 75-76< 169. This is an experience of disorder which is quite different from that described in Prufrock or Portrait. It is a theological one arising, not out of lack of knowledge or inability to distinguish between appearance and reality, but out of sin - the wilful rejection of the divine hierarchy which was stressed so heavily in the teaching of the Medieval Church. The pattern created by God is thus reduced by man to hideous confusion and the result is not merely bewilderment or despair, but horror - something first suggested in the exaggerated melodrama of the last chorus of Sweeney Agonistee^. Here the image of'the ape'recalls the Sweeney poems I have seen Rings of light coiling downwards, descending To the horror of the ape 2 This disruption of the order of creation is associated in the play with the arrival of the knights, tho 'death- bringers', but the speech makes It quite clear that tho condition of sinfulness which focuses itself in the murder of Thomas is universal and that the wom^ of Canterbury, though spectators merely, are themselves involved in the crime. (1) *'You*ve had si cream of a nightmare dream and you've got the hoo-ha*8 coming to you". Collected Poems, p. 132. (2) Collected Plays, p. h2. 170. Have I not known, not known Vhat was coming to be? It was hare, in the kitchen, in the passage. As well as in the consultations of powers. As in the orthodox Christiem doctrine, the state of man, and the state of the whole created order are, in a mysterious way, inextricably woven together, so that man's-Original Sin involves the whole world in corruption and chaos. By the same token, the redemption of man accomplishes the redemption of the whole world For the creation was,subjected to vanity, not of its own will but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope • That the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of Ood. For we know that the whole creation groemeth and . travaileth in pain together until now^. This restoration of the whole world to its former glory is depicted in the speech of the Chorus at the close of the play where the images of the seasons and the countryside are repeated in a pattern which conveys the. Joy at discovering the purpose and meaning of life. A few of the images and the movement of the rhythm in the long lines are reminiscent of the last Chorus from The R0ok. and the Chant of these women,, like that Chorus aShe yook. is intended as a quasl-liturgioal ending to what has been a dramatic ritual. The Imagery of this speech (l) The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. Ch. VTII w. 20-22. 171. lacks the power of earlier speeches (e.g. the ones which begin *Numb the hand* and *Clean the air*) and the ritualistic element creates an air of impersonality and a feeling of distance. But the speech is not a poetic or a dratoatlc failure, for the absence of dramatic conflict within the play and the stylisation of character and attitude^ prepare the audience for an ending in which the playwright asserts *the primacy of the supernatural over the natural life* in the most formal way by use of the Kyries and invocation of the saint. One of the most significant symbols in the play and one which links it with Burnt Norton is that of the *wheel*, used by Thomas in his first speech. T.R. Henn in The Harvest of Tragedy quotes the speech and says We could deduce, even if we did not know it from other sources, Mr. Eliot*8 intense interest in the Upanishad*8 Humemity is tied to a vast pattern, like the Buddhist wheeli in part paesive, in part active, in its turning. It is submission in suffering, submission in \i?illing suffering which is part of tho eternal design. Now it would appear that such a doctrine is theologically questionable. Any circular structure suggests Determinism Nor is the wheel the Christian symbol today Nor is a doctrine of semi-passive suffering more than a part of the truth. But in this attitude we shall, I think, find at least a partial explanation of the plays^. (1) Apart from a brief moment in the scene with the Fourth Tempter there is no-conflictyin the character of Beckett - he seems always to *face the same way*, a figure rather than a person. (2) The Harvest of Tragedy, pp. 221-222. 172. Doubtless there is a suggestion of determinism here and a specific reference to the 'wheel of suffering', but before Eliot is oondemned for 'questionable theology', it should be noticed that the 'eternal action' of which Eliot speaks here, is vastly different from Buddhist ideas of inevitable suffering from which it is the duty of man to escape. As in the second movement of Burnt Norton, (though less powerfully) the context controls and manipulates the image. Henn falsifies the play• wright's position by slightly mis-interpreting tho speech, ^ile Eliot does suggest that humanity is tied to the wheel, at the same time, he suggests that man is actually part of the wheel - for the wheel is the whole of life, revolving, here, around the 'still-point' of the Atonement, as it revolves around the 'still-point' of the Inoamation in your Quartets. And in the lines To which all must consent that it may be willed And which all must suffer that they may will Iti. an attempt is made to express the complex, and logically absurd. Christian doctrine of Providence. Unlike Buddhism, Christianity throws into paradoxical conjunc• tion God's omnipotence and man's free-will. The achieving of God's purposes in the world is seen to be dependent upon the free response of Hie creatures to His love, and (1) Collected Plays, p. 17. 173. their willing acceptance of suffering which is the result of Original Sin and the condition of human existence. But this is not a doctrine of 'semi-passivity'; the acceptance of suffering, althou^ paradoxically ordained by God, ('A martyrdom is always the design of God'....) is, as Thomas's death is meant to be, and as Christ's death was, a deliberate act of choice. At the end of the first volume of The Nature and Destiny of Man. Reinhold Niebuhr has a comment which might almost act as a commentary on this speech from Murder in the Catt^edral Ve cannot, therefore, escape the ultimate paradox that the final excerolse of freedom in the transcendent human spirit is its recognition of the false use of that freedom in action. Man is most free in the discovery that he is not free^. Ve shall find the same paradoxical assertion made in the Christian poems of W.H. Auden. It is on this question of the relation between God's providential action and man's freely-willed response that Eliot and Auden draw most closely together. It is interesting to note that in Speculations T.E. Hulme attaches great value to the symbol of the wheel This sjrmbol of the futility of existence is absolutely lost to the modem world, nor can it be recovered without great difficulty^. (1) The Nature and Peatlnv of Man. Vol. 1, p. 276. (2) Spaculations. p. 3^.. 17^^. It seems to bo Henn*a contention that in Murder In the Cathedral, and possibly, by extension in Burnt Norton also, Eliot is attempting the difficult task of recovering the symbol. But although the 'futility of existence' and a Uulmean view of human nature frequently occurs in the early poems of Eliot, and is hinted at in places in Four Quartets, there is little evidence to suppose that when he uses the symbol in either Burnt Norton or Murder in the Cathedral, the Buddhist belief in life's futility is being suggeisted. Eliot transforms the image in Four Quartets by placing it in the context of the Incarnation, and in Murder, in the Cathedral in the context of the Christian doctrine of the Atonement, both of which doctrines purport to give pattern and meaning to existence. The 'suffering' of which Thomas speaks is not the inescapable and purposeless suffering of the Buddhist, but takes a very definite meaning from the suffering of Christ. In Sweeney Agonistes Eliot deecribed the situation, and posed the problem, of the Intolerable burden of guilt (from which damnation appeared to offer a possible way of escape)i in Murder in the Cathedral. The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party the attempt is made to redeem the situation and answer the problem. The result of Original Sin is the experience of guilt and the 175. knowledge .of schismt separation of God from man, man from man, and man from himself. It is a separation known ultimately in death and hell, and Eliot powerfully evokes the experience in the linest Emptiness, absence, separation from God; The horror of the effortless Journey, to the empty land milch is no land, only emptiness, absence, the Void, Where those who were men can no longer turn the mind To distraction, delusion, escape into dream, pretence, l^ere the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects, no tones, No colours, no forms^ to distract, to divert the soul Prom seeing itself, foully united forever* nothing, with nothing^. The first step towards the overcoming of separation and the ending of schism is the recognition of sin and the acknowledgement of guilt. But Atonement Itself cannot be worked by man. In his treatise on the Incarnation, the Greek father St. Athanaslus, goes on in the second half of his work to speak of Atonement Here, then, is the second reason why the \Jord dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works. He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering Hif3 own temple to death in place of all, to settle man's account with death and free him from the primal transgression^. Helen Gardner claims that martyrdom is the 'central theme* of Murder in the Cathedral. But one wonders quite what she is referring to when she says that it is martyrdom *in its strict ancient sense* witnessing 'to the awful (1) Collected Plays, p. hk, (2) The Inoamation, p. k9» 176. reality of the supernatural'^. This is certainly true and is obviously in accord with Eliot's desire to show 'the primacy of the supernatural', but it does not tako us far enough, for Eliot establishes this primacy in a special way. Thomas's death exemplifies the Christian pattern of the Atonement not merely by reminding men of the 'proffered remedy', but by effecting it in their very lives. They cannot work their own Atonement so Thomas becomes a Christ-figure in the deepest sense. His sacrifice of blood, like Christ's, actually accomplishes the transfiguration of the lives of the women 'forced to bear witness' at Canterbury. His action is not an imitation of Christ's death but a realisation of the sabrifice. Unlike'the choruses from The Rock, the choruses of Murder in the Cathedral are an integral part of the action for they trace the course of this transformation. Although they are unwilling to be implicated in the situation, the women not only acknowledge the disruption of the natural order in Its separation from God We have seen the young man mutilated, 2 The torn girl trembling by the mill-stream but also discover, in the coming of the kni^^ts, their own involvement in sin and recognise their own guilt (1) The Art of T.S. Eliot, p. 133. (2) Collected Plays, p. 29. 177. In the aovB in the bam in the byre in the market- place In our veins our bovele our skulls as well Finally there is the experience of redemption and release from guilt in the restoration of the divine pattern in the vorld The back bent under toil, the knee bent under sin, the hands to the face under fear, the head bent under grief. Ehren in us the voices of seasons, the snuffle of winter, the song of spring, the drone of summer, the voice of beasts and of birds, praise Thee^. Shortly after his baptism into the Ohx'istian Church, £liot vrote an essay in which he maintained that in an age of settled religious practice and belief drama can and should tend towards realism, I say towards, I do not say arrive at The more fluid, the more chaotic the religious and ethical beliefs, the more the drama must tend in the direction of liturgy^. His views on the present age had already been expressed in his review of James Joyce's novel Ulysses in 1923 and, taking due account of the purpose for which the play was written, a glance "at the structure of Murder in the Cathedral would lead us to conclude that the first few (1) Collected Plays, p. k2, (2) Ibid., p. 53. (3) "A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry*. Selected Essays. (k) .'Ulyssesj Order and.Myth* Dial. LJDCV. 5 (November 1923) PP* k80~k8jr, ' 178. decades of the twentieth century were regarded as an age of extreme chaos by Eliot. There is little reason to suppose that events which followed 1935 led him to change his mind; nor does his prose provide any evidence that he didb But It is interesting to note that in his efforts at re-vitallsing the Qnglish tradition of poetic drama he moved further away from the static, liturgical forms of Murder in the Cathedral with each new production. It was a gradual process, for his first attempt at fashionable •realistic* drama Tfao Family Reunion although comparatively successful in its reproduction of the tones and manners of upper-class society, is at least as close in spirit to its predecessors, Sweeney Agonistes and Murder in the Cathedral, as it is to The Confidential Clerk or The Elder Statesman. There is first, the curious ritualistic dance and incantation with which the play ends, reminiscent both of the choric dances of early Greek drama and the Christian liturgical ceremony of Tenebrae^. There is a vestige of this static ritualistic behaviour at the close of tho second act of The Cocktail Party too, but no traces whatsoever in either of the final plays. Secondly there Is the use of a chorus similar to that of the women (l) A ceremony performed each.night of Holy Ueek in which the lights of the Church (candles) are extinguished one by one. 179. of Canterbury. But whereas in Murder in the Cathedral. the women represent a constant 'unchanging* element in the dramatic action, in The Family Reunion, as in Sweeney Agonlgtes, the pratogonlsts themselves disconcortingly turn into a Chorus at sighlfleant moments in the play. The depersonalleation of Ivy, Gerald, Violet and Charles, and their translation into a corporate personality requires an Imaginative agility that is virtually impossible. It is not only asking too much of the actors, but too much of the audience as well. Finally, 1 there, is the use of *poetic fantasies* - a device which is to be found in the abortive Frapnents as well as in Murder in the Cathedral. Within the static, ritualistic framework of both of these earlier productions these *arias* are not intrusive, but, as Eliot himself has admitted, the *beyond character* speeches of The, Faoily l^eunlon. are so remote from the necessity of the action that they are hardly more than passages of poetry which might be spoken by anybody^• In Murder tn the Cathedral Eliot presented an apprehension of the Christian doctrine of the Atonement} in his first *realistic* poetic drama he retraces his steps (1) Eliot*8 own description. (2) Poetry and Drama, p. 30. 180. to the problems which lie at the heart of Sweeney Agonistes . guilt and sin. The connections between The Farally Reunion and the two Framnents are obvious and significant. Besides the technical similarities already mentioned, there is the fact that the later play uses as a framework the plot of the Greek tragedy from which the epigram to Sweeney Agonistee is taken^. Further, they can both be called melodramas, and have the same central motif of violence. Whether Harry Monchesney actually has *done a girl in* is not disclosedt nor is it of great Importance. Ifhat is important is that he endures the same torment as Sweeney*8 friend, the murderer. The sinister knocking with which Fra^ent of an Agon closes, suggests, in the light of the quotation from the Choephoroi. the presence of the spirits of Clytemnaestra, the agents of retribution. Here in The Family Reunion the Brinyes /SvaaenidoeJ^ actually make their appearance outside the windows of the drawing room at Wiahwood. Why do you show yourselves now for the first time? '^en I knew her, I was not the same person^. D.S. J^nes claims that the play is built around Harry's 'spiritual election' and that everyone else is seen in relation to him. This links him with Thomas Beckett, (1) of. however T.R. Henn's claim that the framework of The Family Reunion is Suripidee' Blektra. The Harvest of Tragedy, pp. 222-225* (2) Collected Plays', p. 83. 181. but Harry's election resembles Thomas's in only a very few particulars. In the scene of the Fourth Temptation in Murder in the Cathedral we are given the picture of a roan in the last stage of 'making perfect hie will.' Thomas has already discovered his part in the pattern of life, he has already come to grips with reality end can- accept hie destiny* Marry, on the other hand, is in the first stage of discovering his part in this pattern. He resembles far more closely the composite figure achieved by running together Sweeney and his 'friend'. one thinks to escape By violence0 but one is still alone^. He may speak in the aeoents of the upper-classes but his problems are almost identical with those of Sweeney. He also is unable to communioate. with those around him8 But how can I explain, how can I explain to you? , You will understand lees after X have explained it • aiid is surrounded by people who are not alive to the horrors of the real world. The dream/nigbtraare motif is used in both plays. (1) Collected Plava. p. 66. (2) cf. Sweeney's speecht I gotta use words when I talk to you But if you understand or if you don't That's nothing to me and nothing to you. Collected Poems, p. 31. 132. You have gone through life in sleep, Novor wakon to the nightmare^. But this same scene which carries so many reminders of ^weenev Agonistes. includes iEilso an echo of Burnt Morton. I am tho old house Uith the nosloue smell and the sorrow before morning. In which all past is present, all degradation Is unredeemable 6. ^ Although Eliot tentatively suggests at the beginning of Burnt Morton that *all time is unredeemable*, the Four (ggartet? taken together are an esploration of the ways in which past and present can be Joined so that time actually is redeemed and becomes a matter, not of * the intense moment/isolated ....>* but *.... a lifetioie burning in every moment. * The phrase from Burnt !^orton la used in a later soone, and part of the weakness of the play arises from Eliot*8 failure to unite the metaphysical and psychological categories which he employs. •Degrada• tion* is a psychological or spiritual category} *Time* is a philosophical one. Harry*8 problem is primarily a spiritual one and although thero are passages which hint at a resolution of the difficulties by an apprehension of the 'timeless moment* (in the manner of Four Quartets) they interrupt the action of the play wbich is the gradual recognition of guilt. Although tho Eumonldee frequently (1) Collected Plays, p. 65. (2) Ibid., p. 66. (3) Bast Coker. pony Quartets. p. 22. 183. make their appearance in the context of the 'operatic' sections of the play, there is no sense of Harry's final decision arising inevitably out of the moments of heightened consoiousnees suggested by the *boyond character* speeches. The connection between the illumin- tion (the *rose»garden' symbol) and his acceptance of guilt is never made clear. Unlike the play which immediately preceded it, and that wbloh followed it, The Family Reunion hardlv touches on the Christian doctrine of the Atonements its concern is with Original Sin. Harry is not a sacrificial figure. His 'election', unlike Thomas's and Celia's, is primarily to a vision of the horror of man's universal involvement in sin, not to a life of Atonement for the sins of others. Hem's universal imprisonment in a world of fear and bewilderment is conveyed in the grotesque imagery of the speeohes given to the Chorus And the wings of the future darken the past, the beak and claws have desecrated Historyi Shamed The first cry in the bedroom, the noise in the nursery, mutilated The family album, rendered ludicrous The tenemts* dinner, the family picnic on the moors. Have torn The roof from the house, or perhaps it was never there. And the bird sits on the broken chimney. I am afraidl. In the suggestion that madness and terror lie just beneath the surface of the civilised,consciousness Bliot comes (1) Collected Plays, pp. 87-88. close to expressing these notions which underlie produc• tions of the Theatre of the Absurd, but, like Auden, he asks us to believe that this sense of horror and disloca• tion springs from man's own guilt and his refusal to recognise and accept it. . . The play oloses with the *operatic* speeches of Agatha and Mary in which the theme of blood-guiltiness is made plain. It is obviously meant to provide some kind of resolution of the problem Agatha has spoken about in an earlier scene with Harry It is possible that you have not known what sin You shall expiate, or whose, or why. You may learn hereafter. Moving alone through flames of ice, chosen . To resolve the enchantment under which we suffer . But although we are meant to see Harry as a scapegoat, there is little evidence that expiation of man*s universal sin is actually accomplished, for the last chorus is very like the first And what is being done to us? And what are we, and what are we doing? To each and all of these questions There is no conceivable answer^. Despite their closing lines, Joy, Gerald, Violet, and Oharies are still in the state of the women of Canterbury before Thomas*s death. (1) Collected Plays, p. 105. (2) Ibid., p. 121. 185. afraid in a fear we cannot know, which we cannot face, which none tuidorstands'-. For an exploration of the theme of expiation, we have turn to The, Cocktail Party, which. Murder in the Cathedral excepted, contains the fullest vision of Christianity Eliot achieved. It is a play which tends to arouse oritical controversies and two of its most distinguished critics, Raymond Villlams and T.R. Henu, have made it plain that the treatment of its themes bears very little relation to the Christian vision of life. Speaking of Cella*s death Williams complains For sacrifice now does not redeem the world or bring new life to the waste land. Rather in an obscure way, it ratifies the world as it is. Eliot*8 Christian action is not tragic redemp• tion, but tragic reslgziatlon I think that Eliot in The Cocktail Party abandons the Christian tradition of sacrifice and redemption .0. 2 And in Tho Harvest of Tragedy. Henn underlines a point he has already made in connection with Murder in the Cathedral But perhaps the final and most serious objection to The Family Reunion as to The Cocktail Party. Is the manipulation of determinism in a drama which appears, by intention, to be Christian as to its background, end which uses that background for its snatches of rltual3. (1) Collected Plays, p. 16. (2) *Clodem Tragedy*. Critical Quarterly. Vol. T« Wo. 1., p. 13. (3) The Harvest of Tragedy, p. 225. 186. !^illiams atAd Henn seem to be criticising Sliot on the same grounds. They find in The Cocktail Party a religious pessiQieia similar to that of. Four Quartets ;•«. Feet rising and falling. . Eating and drinking. Dung and death. Life, like time, is 'unredeemable* and operates to a prodeterrained pattern in wbioh human beings are immovably fixed. In such a situation resignation inevitably becomes one of the virtues that will bo extolled. I believo, however, that Eliot*e view of the 'pattern* of life and the place of suffering and death in this pattern is much more subtle than Williams and Henn allow, and that we have in The Cocktail Party, not a Buddhist or a sub-Christian pessimism, but a convincing expression of the Christian doctrines of the Atonement and Providence. Though less prominent a figure than either Thocaas Beckett or Harry Honchosney, Cella Ooplestone clearly belongs in their company. Her actions are cardinal in The Cocktail Party and she is an amalgam of Thomas and Harry. Liko Thomas she chooses a way of action which leads to suffering and death; like Harry she is still in the stages of 'perfecting her will', of accepting a burden of guilt which may or may not be hers. I've never noticed that immorality Uas accompanied by a sense of sini^ (l) Collected Plavs. p, I87. 187. One of the most significant sieones of the play is that in which Celia and Reilly confront each other. It is here that Eliot seems to experience the greatest difficulty in persuading his modern audience of the reality of sin. The scene opens badly with a series of banal remarks about loneliness and the inability to communicate. It is not until the introduction of the 'technical' words 'sin' and 'atone' that the dialogue quickens to conviction, and in Celiafs description of her adulterous affair with Edward we find the distortion of the everyday world of human relationships powerfully portrayed Can we only love . Something created by our own imagination? Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable? Then one i£ alone, and if one is alone Then lover and beloved are equally unreal And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams^. The language is sparse ax\d the picture of corruption has none of the physical repulsiveness that characterises Harry's description of his world, but then Celia is.much 2 more articulate than Harry. The image of the succubus flits quickly across the imagination as Celia speaks, and suggests the horror of sin which ends in *the final desolation' of self-contredness. it is only now that (1) Collected Plays, p. 188. (2) Both R.H. Bobbins and G.C. Smith note this image and detect the influence of Charles Williams' novel Descent into Hell. 188. her opening remarks about loneliness take on meaning. The familiar theme of 'appearance and reality* occurs frequently. throughout, the qeene,, but, Eliot. is. not. merely repeating what he has said before in the first volume of his poetry. Here the ultimate unreality is the choice to be self-sufficient^. Celia*s world is not that of Prufrockt sordid» trivial, and disintegrated, but one in which self- 2 enclosure^ damnation, has already begun . She has also a self-knowledge which the personae of the'early poems are entirely without. She defines the frustration and unreality of her life as *a source of sln^ f a. condition which she suffers, but for which she cannot be held personally responsible. In the context of her inability to form a fruitful relationship with iBdward she describes that condition of frustration and miefery which the church has traditionally called *fallennps8*. Its not the feeling of anything I*ve ever done, Tifhich i might get away from, or of anything in me % could get rld^ of - but of emptiness, of failure > Towax^is someone, or something, outside of myself3. (1) . This point is underlined dramatically by the futile attempts of Edward and Lavlnia to exist in separation from each other. (2) Cf. Niebuhr* Man, in other words, is a sinner not because he is ione limited individual within a whole but rather because he is betrayed, by his very ability to survey the whole, to imagine himself the whole. The Nature and Destiny of Man; Vol. I, p. 117. (3) Collected Plavs. p. 188. 139. And the feeling of bewilderment and desolation which accompanies the knowledge of separation from God and the search for lost innocence is conveyed in lines which are faintly reminiscent of archetypal images of Biblical and Epic narratives, and fairy stories. But even if I find my way out of the forest I shall be left with the inconsolable memory Of the treasure I went into the forest to find And never found, and which was not there And perhaps is not anywhero? Bat if not anywhere Uhy do I feel guilty at not having found it? Reilly in reply makes it clear that innocence is irretrievable, and that release from the unbearable strain will require faith and courage, for it means 'a terrifying Journey*^. One which, we discover later, involves renunciation and death. It has been suggested that The Cocktail Party is about the two traditional methods of mysticism - the two ^ways* by which the soul achieves union with Ood 2 i.e. experiences Atonement . Celia, it is claimed, represents the Via (Tegativa, and follows the path of the renunciation of *created things*. The Chamberlaynes, consequently, are taken as representatives of the Way of Affirmation in whieh the value of the created order is (1) Collected Plays, p. 190. (2) Cf. Carol H. Smith, T.S. Eliot*a Dramatic Theory and Practice, pp. 137 ff. 190. asserted and is seen as an image of God*8 glory^. It is true that Cella chooses a life which entails a denial of * earthly* things and eventually death, and that Edward and Lavlnia continue their efforts at giving meaning to their marriage, but the play*8 primary concern does not seem to ne to be a mystical one (in this narrow sense). If this interpretation were valid then Eliot*s view of the Way of Affirmation would rightly be condemned as dull and second-rate. Eliot himself is partly to blame for this reading of the play. Reilly offers Celia an unambiguous choice between two couroes of action one of which he calls * reconciliation* to the *human condition*, which he paints in grey or neutral tones, and which Inevitably means the loss of ecstasy and vision. In a world of lunacy, . Violence, stupidity, greed it is a good life . What is more disquieting is the suggestion that, unlike Oelia, Edward and Lavlnia are given no opportunity of making a choice g In a speech to Celia earlier in the play, Edward remarks I see that my life was determined long ago And that the struggle to escape from it Is only a make-believe, a pretence „ That what is, is not, or could be changed-^. (1) Cf0 Choruses from The Rock. Collected Poems, pp. 179-180. 0 Greater night, we praise thee for the less. The eastern light our spires touch at morning We thank thee for the lights that we have kindled. (2) Collected Plays, p. I90. (3) Ibid., p. 153. 191. The world-weary tones have a ring of hopelessnessi a resigned acceptance that his life will follow a course over which he has no control. This is hardly the Way of Affirmation as the Christian understands it, and if this is where Edward*s vision ended, Henn's point about Buddhist determinism would be Justified. What most critics fail to recognise is the closeness with which the two 'stories* are woven together, and that Celia's death accomplishes a change of a particular kind in the lives of Edward and Lavinia. The final act parallels in a rather strange contemporary idiom the closing scenes of Murder in the Oalhedral. If we examine the Chorus of the women of Canterbi ry we discover that the death of "Hiomas has not altered the structure of their lives at all. The same thini^s happen; they still fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal1, but Thomas's death has effected a new acceptance of this life which somehow miakes its physical structure of little importance. This spiritual transformation is Atonement and is expx^essed in a poem of praise and Joy. In a modern comedy such a poem as Kho Chorus's is dramatically impossible} the affirmation has to be (l) Cellectod Plays, p. 5*. 192. demonstrated at a mundane level, but within the limits 8(9t by the play Itself, we see the Ijives of Edward and Lavinla undergoing a change which is as significant as that of the women. It is even more Important to rejalise that, as in Murder in the Cathedral it is the shedding of the martyr*s blood which accomplishes this change. If Edward and Lavlnia had * worked out their own selvation* then the episode which doscribes the death off Cella would be an intrusion. But It happens to be at the core of the final act, for around it all 8ignif4 cant convorsation rovolves. The link between bis own life and Colia*s death is made by Edward when he. *coi'rect8* the tmoonselous irony of his initial reaction to the news And Just for a handful of plagiie stricken natives Who would have died anyway-^. by saying I cannot help fueling That, in some way, my responsibility la greater than that of a band of half-crazed savages^. Ho oohoes here tho experience of the women of Canterbury who, while experiencing release and restoration by the death of Thomas, are forced into a Precognition of their own guilt. (1) Collected Plays, p. 206* (2) Ibid., p. 210. 193. In many ways The Cocktali Pari ;y is an unsatisfactory play. The central theinea do not energy eloarly and there is an air of contrivance about nearly every effect, but there are passages t^hich succeod brilliantly, and the Christian doctrine of the Atonement is investigated -urith a great deal of imaginativie insi^^. In one ^ay it can be said to be more universal in itp vision them the earlier, obviously Christian play, Murder in the Cathedral. for less attention is paid to the brobleras of 'special election* and more to the eoeunon ejKperience of sin and the effect of sacrificial death. p,E; Jones' allegorisa- tlon of the play is a little hard {to suallo'c;, but he does grasp its religious significance ^on he says a 0 e • • the Cleaning of the party /sit the end of the pla27 altered. Celia's death has brought them closer together, as it has tied them to Peter. The life of the sElrit is invigorated and the bonds of society are strengthened. Before the party itself beglss, a oruoifision has been recalled and a vicasions atonement recognised. The cocktail pasty can bo the secular counterpart of the Gi sununion Service if given in the right spirit, the titbits and the short drinks the equivalent of the bread and t7ine^. In The Confidential Clerk El^ot picks up a theme vith vhich he i^as preoccupied in she first volume of his poetry -> appearance and reality « and explores its possibilitios t^ithln the frarae^orlc of a dramatic form that Is frequently based upon the^r confusion » the fetrce. ^/ (l) The Plays of T.S. Eliot, p. Ikj I9h, Tfao play*a action, revolving arounjs a traditionally faroioal situation of taiataken ideititieSf gives convenient theatrical dophasle to the playvright*s special concern of drawing the eon|trast between the v7orld of reality and that of appearance. The discovery of personal identity, vhich is the dopninEmt theme of the play, entails the discovery, both of the difference bettfeen appearance and reality, and the necessity of ehan^ng the public vorld of appee ranee by making it take on reality from the private vision. It is significant that the only person tho is deeply distressed by Mrs. Guasard'e revelations is ^±r Claude, t^ho, having turned his back on his o^n vision, is fearful of the prospect of change in the public vorld, and is unable to accept the not? identity which rea|ly belongs to hio. Problems of identity are not dist: netively Christian problems, and in The Third Voice, Denis fionoghne, unlike most critics of the plays, signif^cantl y claims that, beoauBO of its preoccupation with the nature of reality, The Confidential Clerk is farthest away from Christian doctrine, and oloaest to Four Quartets'''. But although the doctrines o the Znoamation and the Atonement make no appearance, there is a religious dimension in the recurrent theme bf fatherhood, which (l) The Third Voice, pp. 153-15^ 195. Bliot relates to the Fatherhood of God in Colby's possible vocation to the sacred miiilstry Sggersont I don't see you spending a lifetime as an organist. I think you'll come to find you've another vocation^. The primacy of the supernatural over the natural is certainly demonstrated here, but in terms of priggishness and with, a heavy-handodness that rot even the farcical structure can alldviato. There is also the religious dimension ifhich is suggested by the use of an image \ hich has haunted much of Bllot's i«ork, that of the 'garc en'. It becomes in The Confidential Clerki a symbolical focal point, though, curiously enou^, the image is aliiost completely evacuated of religious content. In the inti»rchange beti^oen attempt at using It Lucasta and Colby, there is some to convey ezpiloltly religious ooiinotations. As in Four Quartets it is used to suggest a vorld of reality beyond that of noraal apprehension emd hardly understood. The poetry frequently reaches a high degree of evocative poller, and is oeoasionally strongly reminiscent of the first movement of Burnt Norton 2 . But confusion enters when Colby says (1) Collected Plays, p. 290. (2) The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery. And the unseen eyebeam. crossed, for the roses Had the look of flowers tha^ are looked at. Four Quartets, p. 8. 196. Xf I were religious, God woul<|l walk £n my ' garden^• Tho risferenoe is obvious, but out jsf place. Ue are reminded, not merely of the innocence and beauty of Sden, but also of the story of the Fall in which tho Adaoi, in shamo and dismay, heard the voice of tho Lord 2 God walking in the garden in the ^ool of the day . There is littlo in the root of thd play which supports this introduction of (guilt* or sdggeGts that it has any part to play in tho disoovery of identity or reality, This is left to the last of tho p: ays in which the same problOQS are presented, and esploi'od in ways which are Eiore closely» though lose obvious ly related to Christian patterns of rodomption by penitenso and love. Bat the alraoot 'mystical* nature of Colby's esporienee in this scone is set aside, for Eliot, in a way that Is difficult to follow^ joauses him to reject the * garden* of his inner wo^ld for tjhe more banal one to which Sggerson constantly returna{ both in speech and at the end of every working day Colbyt 7ovt know 2 think that B^gerson's garden Is more real than mine3, Zt is Bggerson who controls the ^vents of the closing soenoo, and wo are left, at the ond, with tho disquieting (1) Collected Plavo. p. 2k6, (2) Genesisi Ch. Ill, 8. (3) Collected Plavsn p. 2^»5o 197. impression that Colby's sojourn in Joshua Park, however fruitful in things like 'marrovs I id vegetables' will not make the public world take on the irdor and beauty of a priests vision. The fault lies in the projection of Bggorson vho, despite Bliot's irony, never quite manages to gain the audience's sympathy. Ifhe intention of the plajTNrig^t is clear, but an audienlce cannot but be disappointed by the suggestion thajt Colby is to become another Bggerson. The Confidential 01,a3c;h: ends t^ith Sir Claude Mulharamer's profotand bewilderment < In an attempt to save himself and his whole world i'rom complete disinte-> gration, he clutches desperately i it trhat • he has previously ignored - the love of Luoasta Angol. The last play - The Elder Statesmani picks up thii» theme and develop^s I this situation, so that a relationship of love and dependence between a father and a| daughter beeomeB the background against which a patterh of redemption is worked outo In turning from Euripides back to Sophocles, the 'spiritually elect* hero disappears altogether, and, in the figure of Lord Claverton, Sir Claude nnlhammer advances to the centre of the stage. Although it hardly bears coopairlson, as a creative achieWmeht, with any. of his majcr poetic works, in many ways this last attempt at diama is remarkable. In 198. It Eliot has virtually perfected a verse which has *•.0 so wide a range that it can s^y anything that has to be said . •. * • Zt has a proper * transparency * so that the listener is never distraci;ed by the medium, which nevertheless is capable of framing into *poetry* whenever the emotional intensity o:* the situation requires it. Consequently there is nothing incongruous or artificial about the love-poetry o:' Charles and Monica in the opening scene, as there is about some of the poetic 2 speeches of previous plays . ]!Sore(»ver it is a religious play which establishes the *primao;r of the supernatural*, without once mentioning the technical terms of religion"^. But, having noted the technical ezsellence of the play, it seems there is little more to b^ said. Repeated perfection of technique readings reveal more and more the but fail to move and enrich the rekder in the ways that his groat poems do. That which ha» been compressed into and conveyed, with the only a few lines in Little Giddin^ greatest emotional intensity, is h^re spread out over a two-hour drama (1) Poetry and Drama, p. 15. (2) The *boyond eharaoter* speeches of Harry and Mary, for example, in The Family Reinion. (3) Cf. Eliot*s own remarks about •religiajs' and *devotional* poetry in'Religi bn and Literature.' Selected Essays, p. 391. 199. Let rae disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your life4iiae*a effort. And last, the rending pain of I re-enactment Of all that you have done, an^ beent the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done t( others* harm IJhich once you took for exercise of virtue. ^ Then fools* approval stings, end honour stains . And the result is a certain flaccidity of language that prevents the reader from making a strong and vital response to it. The characters are convincing enough, but a little 'flat' and uninteresting. The Christian vision Is entertained, but seldom qonveyed with passion, and is finally set aside. And the moments when the verse flares into 'poetry' are few and far between. In an interesting parallel between Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and The Elder Statesman. Orover Smith remarks that ^e Elder Statesman blends a jkmesian concern for understanding with a Purit m ansiety about guilt. Its hero. Lord CLaverton, escapes the governess' misfortunot he divines that his two ^osts are harmless provided that he purifies his own soul^. Smith, like Edmund Wilson and many J>ther critics, is all too eager to label Eliot's religioui} attitudes 'Puritan'. The distinctive oharaoteristio of Puritanism, as we have already seen, inheres in the combination of a strict Calvinistic theology and a scrupulous psychology, the (1) Four Quartets, pp. 39-^0. (2) T.S. Eliot's Poetry and Plavs. p. 2k5» 200. consequences of which are a lack of assurance about salvation and harshness of attitudel as regards creed and moral standards. This attitude is foreign to the tone of The Elder Statesman which is realistic rather than harsh, for in it Eliot investigates a situation which has its roots in the universal experience of old ages the fear of the emptiness of life, the sense of having failed to achieve anything of value, the sludden realisation that the clock cannot be put back, and tjhe self-recrimination that borders on remorse. Lord Clavortohs Say rather, the exequies Of the failed successes, the successful failures, Wio occupy positions that other men oovet, When we go, a good many folk are mildly grieved, And our closest associates, the small minority Of those who really understand the place we filled Are inwardly delighted^. This is simply a human attitude, neither Puritan nor oven Christian. But, of course, Eliot does not leave tho matter there8 he makes it clear that Claverton*s fears and anxieties arise out of his inability to possess and Inhabit that inner, private worjld which both Monica and Charles know in their love, and{ which gives reality and meaning to the outer, public wolrld. This was the problem of The Confidential Clerk and Lord Claverton like Sir Claude Mulhammer, is a man who, having ohosen the (l) Collected Plays, p. 303. 201. world of public appearances, has reached the stage where these cease to matter. Solitude aiid privacy face him and the condition of being able to exist in this inner world is the ability to recognise iind accept, not only the weaknesses and limitations of ones own personality, but responsibility for the chaos aiid suffering one has caused in the lives of others. Th:.s theme of the necessity for the recognition and acceptance of guilt had its beginnings in Sweeney Aponjlstes. whore in a setting of melodramatic violence tlie knocking at the end of the second Frapient hints at fe irs and horrors which have to be faced. In The Family Rmnlon ansiety and guilt make their appearance in the figurss of the Bumenides. In The Elder Statesman they are dramatised and personalised for the first time in Gomes and Mrs. Carghill. This has the effect of making Lord Claverton's guilt much more explicit than Harry Ktonchesney's, and much more individual. Uhereas the obvious intention of The Family Reunion is the depiction of an universal condition, in Christieui terms. Original Sin, The Elder Statesman involves us in a particular condition of sinfulness for which a particular act of contrition is needed. Harry is spiritually responsible, Olaverton technically. Lord Glavertoni . This may surprise youi I feel at peace now. It is the peace that ensues upon contrition, ^en contrition ensues upon knowledge of the truth. 202. The picture of Lord Claverton facii g the shame of his own actions, and acknowledging and accepting his own guilt is, obviously, closely related to i Smith suggests a kind of *rittial cleansing* of Lord Claverton by implying that the *exi>roism* of %he ghosts* is dependent upon *the purification of the soul*, this is slightly misleading* Although the re is an element of ritual purification in Claverton*s oonfession to Monica, Eliot makes it clear that exorcism and purification are part of the same process. This again repeats a Christian patterns recognition of sin is followed by a repentance and contrition which expresses itself in confession and is experienced in liberation. But the aetion is unbroken, and continuously one. The purification is, in a sense, the exorcism as well as the confeesion. Despite these Christian elements however, the vision of the play comes closer, in the rather than the Christian, for Loi-d Claverton*s purifica• tion and liberation are seen in idolation. His reliance upon Monica*8 love, though emphasised at tho beginning of the play, recedes further and fur bher into the background. His is an individual act, the culiiination of which is his 203. confession of sins. The Christian doctrine of grace, whether given directly or mediated by the love or suffering or work of others, is of little relevance to The Elder Statesman, for it is not Honica's love which is the important feature of Claverton •s salvation but his own huml4,lty and strength. He fig its a battle in which no-one else can be of any real assistance, and he wins a victory which barely touches on the lives of those around him* The great Christian tliemes of Atonement and Oraoie which lie at the centre of j^arder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party are absent from this last, and probably most successful, verse-drama. The long search for poetic dtama seems to have led only to discovering how to write a successful west-end play} a remarkable achievement indeed, but a bltiterly disappointing on^. At the end of this brief survey of the plays we have reached a point at which it is poesible to view and make a brief evaluation of Eliot's attitude to, and expression of, the Christian Interpretation cf life in his creative works. The predomlneuit concern throughout his life seems to have been the fragmentariness of human perception and understanding, the chaos of the contemporary world, and the need of dlseovering or imposing an order or a pattern (l) Nicholas Brooke. Durham Pnlv^eraity Journal. Vol. XLVI, No. 2, pp. 66-70. 20k, which would make sense of experien(»e. The famous statement made in 192S in his Prefiice to the volume of essays For Lancelot Andreves. and w^ieh has dogged him all his life but which he has refused to deny^, is biographical evidence of the eoncorn he felt an^ of the steps ho took in solving the problem in his private life. His profound interest in the work of P |.H. Bradley and his investigation of the philosophieal problem of *appearance and reality* as well as his self-effacing, but confident and penetrating, political and soc ological studies, show that this was not merely an asthet:Le or even a religious IV. problem. But it is in the world of art, and more particularly, literature, that the focal point is to be found. From the numerous critical essays there emerges the belief that the artist is the i^an who has both to impose an order upon chaotic human es^perience - his art - and also to fit into a pattejrn which he has Inherited - the tradition, ^en i^ 1950 he stated in a lecture on Dante I still, after fo^ty years, regard his poetry as the most persisjbent and deepest influence upon my own verse. he was expressing an admiration fo:* this aesthetically formal and religiously orthodox po(»t, not merely because (l) See Preface to To Criticige th e Critic. (2) 'fAiat Dante means to me.' To Ct-iticize the Critic. p. 123. 205. of his 'width of emotional remge*", but because of his power to order human experience Ini o a single coherent pattern. It is against this background that Eliot's exploration and preisentatlon of the Christian vision must be under• stood. To say that Christianity and the Catholie Church provided him with an answer to the particular questions which troubled him is in no way to denigrate his faiths to question its depth or reduce his acceptance of it to the utilitarian level of a convenient mythology, but it does mean that his approach is dietlnctive and occasionally blinkered, once again the similarities between, T.B. Hulrae and Bliot must be mentioned. Elict's failure to find order at the natural level and hiii search for it at the supernatural oflten bears closer r< (semblance to the ideas about 'limitation' and 'perfection' in Speculations than to orthodox Christian formulations about the nature of man and his destiny. But, whereas Hulme frequently talks a kind of pseudo-theology, giving technical terms peculiar meanings, Bliot accepts traditional interpre• tations and explores all the avenjues of orthodox theology which the words open up - so lon^ as the concepts which they represent have some bearing on the particular problems which crowd his mind. Consequently the avenue (l) f3hat Dante means to me. 2!S Crlticige the Critic. p. 13*. 206. which is most deeply and thoroughl]|r explored is that of the Zncarnatien for, in its statement of God made Man, he perceived the vision of orders a Supernatural pattern being imposed upon, and giving a ffl»aningto , an inchoate mass of natural occurrences. Christianity, however, takes its life from the inseparablls doctrines of the Znoarnation and the Atonement, and while Eliot seems, intellectually and spiritually, to have understood the fact that the Xnoarnation is not aerely involved with, but is theologically dependent upojn, the Atonement, it seems to have eluded his creative and imaginative grasp. This is a large generalisation the truth of which Z have already tried to demonstrate. Thci t he used the words sin and atonement, and that he was capable of portraying the degradation and depravity of humaii existence as well as its futility and chaos must be refongised, but the fact remains that his predominating at itude to man*s condition is such that he is led to emphasise the.import- anee of the Zncamation and the order it impos es at the expense of the Atonement and the reconciliation it offers, Zn the writing of the plays it seems as though Eliot was making an attempt to *redre8s| the balance* and complete his Christian vision of the world, for the Atonement is a doctrine which de^ls with guilt and repentance, sacrificial suffering: and forgiveness, and 207. all these themes are prominent in dore than one play. Biit apart from certain sequences in| Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party, which bear comparison with the profound analysis in parts of Ash Wednesday, his touch is unsure and his presentation theoretical. In 1933 shortly after the pro Interest will clearly be seen if the statement can be accepted that there hai i hardly been a poet of sliailar magnitude in English whose work, not devotional in oheura iter, shows the operative, dramatic presence >f Christianity^. I am willing to recognise both Bli>t's magnitude as a poet and the 'operative, dramatic jiresonce of Christianity* in his work (nothing produced sine a 1935 could substantially alter the evaluation), but an important qualification must be madei However complete his private vision of Christianity may be, hlG power of expressing it is limited. Far from being the pcetic representation of Christian orthodoxy, as many critics maintain, his works only oocasionally suggests/ the prdsence of the Christian faith in its fullness, and, taken as a whole, provide us with a picture in which the tw(» cardinal doctrines appear very differently. The imai^e of the Incarnation glows with accuracy and depth whi le that of the Atonement is blurred and superficial. In sjapport of my argument I (1) The Double Agent, p. I87. 208. intend to make a comparison betweei. the achievement of Eliot and that of one of his youngc r contemporaries W.H. Auden in whose work, sometimet seriously flawed and frequently irritatingly self-conse: ous, an ability to grasp euid express the wholeness of the Christian vision, which evaded Eliot, can be seen. 209. CHAPTER Vml Introduction .to the poetry of W.H. Auden 6. S. Fraaer'e book on modem Ipoetry Vision and Rhetoric contains a disoassion on tde poetry of tf.B. Teats in vhich the critic makes an interesting aside about the %»ork of two young^er contemporaries and their Christian attitudes The modem Christian attitude tends to lead to a preoccupation vith sin. Prom thiS( Yeats vas quite free. In the last ten years of Teats*8 life« these two contrasting atti• tudes were well represented in this country by the work of t3r* Auden and tar. Sliot. Mr. Auden, in the 1930*8« was a kind of liberal seml;^£larsi8t« profoundly but not always obviously* /TOY italics/ affected by a Christian upbringingt Hr<> Bliot was a Cliristian conservative« profoundly but not always obviously affected, particularly in his ooncera with social questions, by a liberal upbringing. These two poets, in fact, had much more in common with each other than either had witti Teats*. S'raser is by no means the only critic to draw attention to the similarities between Eliot and Audeni Beach, Specurs, Hoggart, and most serious critics of Auden*s poetry have all made substantial efforts at comparing the two poets. But although this kind of critical activity has become commonplace, it still has value and interest, and although Fra8er*s remarks are addressed to their work (l) Fraser, p. kZ, 210. Of the thirties* since «hich time Woden's Christianity has become explicit» he neatly points up similarities and differences that are not confined to that period. It is not surprisine; that the comparison is so often made I the fact that each reversed his former ideological position) vhen both t^ere men of sonie maturity, to accept the Christian faith seems to demand the comparison. Moreover the influence of Sliot eai^ be clearly seen in 1 some of the younger man*s poems • ^at is of significance hot»ever( is the further fact that* though possessed of a common faith and ot^ing allegianccf to a particular branch of the.Anglican church» the tvo men display a religious sensibility vhich is as ^^fferenZ as their poetic means of expressing it. miis difference is determined|to a. great extent, as Fraser suggests, by the differez^ce in their social and eulturjal backgrounds* The upbringing of a boy in the nineteenth-century home(f a cultivat< d, humanistic, and Unitarian S3iddle*Ue8t businessman < iffera radically from ' that of a boy bom in I907 whose fcither is a provincial Medical Officer \jith strong ^glo- Whereas &liot retained throughout Ms life the intellectual (1) IJevill Coghill, in his contri|>ution to the s3rmposium compiled in 19^8 by &3arch and Tanibdmuttu, gives an account of the impression Bli<^t •s verse made on his pupil, Auden, at Oxford in th^ late twenties. (Symposium, p. 82). 211. fastidiousness and the Puritan maniier which must have characterised his family, it is the specifically religious training of Auden which never seems to have left him. £liot*s final spiritual position involved baptism into the Christian ohUrcht Auden simpl]f[ returned to the tradi* tion in whioh he had been nurtured from an early age. T*S« Httlme commenting on his own attitude to the Christian faith remarkedt 'It isriot , then, that Z put up with the dogma for the sake of the sentiment, but that Z may possibly swallow the sentiment for the sake .1 of the dogma* . Though Bliojb gives^ little indication of recognising a distlnctlan between sentiment and dogma in his own religion, it isprobabl e that had he been pressed his attitude would havle been far closer to aulme's than to Auden*8 who makes it clear that while seeing the necessity of dogma, it^ e the sentiment of the faith which is of greater importance to him Zn ra]/ Eden each observes his cjompulsive rituals and superstitious tabuls but we have no morals*/ Zn his l^ew Jerusallem the temples will be empty but allbil l practise the rational virtue82. This strong attachment to the sentllment of Christianity is more important to Auden*s work t^an is generally recognised* Zn Sliot's poetry we e^re constantly aware (1) Speculations, p. 71* (2) From 'Vespers*. Shield o^ Aeh^naa. p, 76. 212. Of the powerful, philosophical intellect questioning. investigating, and ordering the mat*eria l which is set before usi in Auden*s, despite the erudite flourishes and the range of reference, the intellectual control is often slack, and at times oompleteJy submerged in, what can only be called, a ritualistic Auden commented on his return to tlie faith • ••• however bored Z mijfht be at the very thought of Ood, Z enjoyed services in his worship very much more probably than manv who were more devout than Z *• Bis love of tbe more formal arts oif opera and ballet is well-known, and in 1937 Ohristophei* Zsherwood spoke of the restraint which he found it neoessary to exercise during their collaboration on the itlays Auden is a musician and a ritualist .... If Auden had bis way, he woulil turn every play into a cross between graiid opera and high mas^ The restraint does not seem to hav<^ been esercised very effectively, for l8herwood*s words are an uncomfortably accurate description of the plays is they stand. They are, for the most part, static compositions of recitatives. (1) Hodem Canterbury Pilgrims, p 37. (2) y.H. Auden. A Collection of Critical Bssavs. p. 10. 213. arias, and choruses nearly all of whioh can be (and have been) removed from their dramatic contest and reproduced as separate pieces with virtually no loss of poetic slgnifieeuice• There are i^ltualisti elements in Bliot*s plays as well, but with the exeeptito n of The Rook (a pageant and not a play) violence is done to the material if anything is removed from its imcoediate context. Until this love of ritual somewhat akin to the playing of a game is understood and recognised, kuden*s work frequently presents serious difficti|lties for it character• ises everything he does and to somel extent accounts for the distinctive nature of his religions sensibility. Both in his autobiography VorlA within Horld and in an essay published in 1953 8tepli|en Spender stresses the intelleetualism of Auden and hlls attitudes^; an evaluation which mi^t at first sight seem to be at variance with what has been said about his love of ritual. But Auden*s ritualism involves, besides an emotional response to physical expressions wbich are more immediate in their appeal than verbal ones, the *strongly intellectual* appreciation of abetzact patterns and formal arrangements* A ritual like a game , a mathematical problem, a detective story , or a piece of music'', can be (l) U.K. Auden* A Collection of Oritical Bssavs. p. 30. (2) Cf. Auden*8 essay *The Guilty Vicarage *, The Byer*B Hand, pp. 1^6-158. (3) 'The Composer*. Another Time. p. 48. 2lU, regarded, at a certain level, as self-contained and complete, and enjoyed for its own sake as an exercise in pure form. To treat the ritual of the Church in this way is to debase it, for religion then Ibeccmes an unreal aesSbetioism that ignores the beliefs and principles from which the ritual purports to draw Sts life and meaning. Auden is fully aware of this dangex , and his delight in the sentiment of Christianity nevex stops at an aestlaetic appreciation of pure form, it leadG him on to the acceptance of the intellectual ima^e of that worship the whole structure of Christian dtgma. But whereas Eliot and Hulrae value doctrine as c. powerful, and ultimately unemewerable, philosophj' of life, poems like Waw Year Letter and Christmas Oratorio frequently give the impression that Auden enjoys tike whole structure purely as a perfect interrelation of intellectual arguments. R.P. Blackraur maintains that It is a commonplace assertion that Mr. Bliot has shaped both his Christianiity and his technique to forward the exprossive needs of his mind^. Out of its context this seems to h6 an unnecessarily 'obvious* statement, for all men, ^o some extent, shape (1) Language as Gesture, p. 181. 215. their beliefs, and all artists, in some degree their material, according to their * expressive needs *, but the significance of Praser*s comment bojcomes apparent in the contrast between Bliot and Auden. ThQ techniques which Auden employs, with the greatest virtuosity, are nearly all 'received* techniques, and the Christianity which he expresses is a /received* faith in which the existential note is often lacking* Besides the air of detachment from the beliefs and attitudes whiclh the ritual embodies, there is from time to time, a superficiality in his treatment of those beliefs, and a tendency to accept and state rather than explore and x^o.-create . Zn Bliot we have the exploration and re-creation., but always in answer to particular questions whiclh personally pre- occupy him* Zn Auden there is a greater breadth, a power to see beyond his own personajl problems, an ability, bom of the ritualistic sekise., to grasp the interrelation of all of the parts ot the Christian pattern and oocasionally to present the authentic Christian experience with a knowledge that evades Bliot* Zn Bliot we are given the pjrofound examination of certain Christian dogmas, in Audbn we oocasionally get a glimpse of the quality of the fall Christian experience• Zn the essay by Stephen Spendolr already mentioned. 216. the author has some remarks about Aluden's personal life which, however illuminating about the earlier works, are misleading as a guide to the understanding of the later poetry. Auden's ideas he says • have changed as striklingly as his way of life has remained the same. There is a dualistio idea running through all his work which encloses it like the sides of a box. This idea is Symptom and Cure The diagnostician Auden is much th|s same as he was at Oxford. It is his conception of tjlie Cure which has changed. At one time loye in the sense of Freudian release from inhibitioni at another time a vaguer and more exalted idea of lovingi at still another tie Social Revolntioni and at a yet later stage, Christianity^. The Implication of a dichotomy between Anden*8 beliefs and his actual life suggests that t lere is a fundamental unreality and lack of seriousness a»out the beliefs. Eraser echoes Spender's remarks in lis own evaluation of Auden'8 work God, like the libido, or like bhe dialectic, is for Auden chiefly a useful ^eneraliaationt assuming the existence of Ood, he finds it possible to solve certain problemsS. Like many of Auden*s critics. Spend »r and Fraser, are stispieioua of the * answers' the poeb provides for problems which he himself poses, and lump tO(^ther, in the same W W.H. Auden. p. 28. (2) V^sjfM^ and ^etpii^o, p. I56. 217* slightly contemptible bundle, all bhe ideologies which have found expression in his work. The adoption of Freudianism, Marxism, and Ohristiaiity follows an identifiable and monotonous pat ten | whatever the cure, its relation to the symptom remain} at best a tenuous one* Zt is true that Auden*s air »f detachment, his constant experimentation and game-flaying give this criticism an element of truth, nonstheless, Z find it inadequate as an.evaluation of the whole body of his poetry* Vhe later volumes display structures of thought and feeling different from those of the earlier poems, and the demeuids of the Christian religion are ^not only more partioularised but more deeply felfc than the philosophies of Harx or Freud* While the problams do remain largely unchanged, their relation to the aaswers is so much closer that it can be oalled necessary• Zn other words, the problems which Auden poses and investigates in the early writings are primarily religlious ones which cannot be solved successfully in Marxist br Freudian terms. Although there are a few poems which capture a Marxist ideal, there are few which can be lealled *Marxi8t* in the same way that many can be callled *Christian*. Zn earlier volumes the' poetic force invariably derives from the poet*s understanding of the *sjrmptoms*, in later poems it frequently derives from h|i8 recognition of the *cures*. 218. CHAPTER JX. Audan's Poetry (l)t From Poems pL930 to Another Time It would be platitudinous to xe-emphasise what is evident from all of Auden's early tiork and what all serious criticisms have pointed oul with varying degrees of clarity - the elosenoss of the joet to his agei his acute awareness of contemporary so( ial and political issues, his interest in the international situation, and his deep concern for the values of the society which surrounded him in England in the s^cohd and this Auden>8 work, convey a strong sensa of hopefulness and the desire for personal fulfilment which contrasts with the surrounding poems whose themes,, for the most part, (1) Poems 1930. p. kj. 219. are the sicknesses, weaknesses an<|l distortions in human society. Possibly, for this reason, the poem might be called untypical, but it is untyp:^ca l only of these early volumes, for the same notes of Joyful expectancy and confidence of ultimate satisf iction are transposed into the specifically religious k)y of a later sequence like Horae Caiionicae. . Spears su ^gests that the figure of the wanderer represents the mifldle-olass hero leaving his comfortable surroundings and Accepted political creeds for more dangerous ways of political thought, hat this is too narrow an interpretation and seems hardly Justified by the poem^ itself . Auden may well have been deeply involved in Marxism at the time of the poem*s composition, but there is little internal evidence of its influence. What Ideologic al overtones there are, are religious* The mystoriousnefis of the *impulse*! Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle and the categorical nature of itc demand Upon what man it fall No cloud-soft hand can hold jhim, restraint by women, both suggest this. Moreover we ^Ind in this poem the beginnings of what later becomes a central problem in his apprehension of the Christiaik faith and a constant theme in his presentation of its the relationship (l) The Disenchanted Zaland* p. kl. 220, between freedom and necessity; Gsd's demand and man's response. The wanderer, even thoagh he appears to choose his path, is not free to refuse it. There is no freedom in the absolute sense, it is seen to be exercised only in the willing acceptance of what is already destined, In the third section of his laterl quasi-autobiographical 1 poem New Tear Letter*, the probletn is elaborated in an unambiguously religious way. Here in Poem XI the verse is less philosophical and more al]lusiv e and there is nothing specifically religious about the presentation except that it stands firmly in the context of an essentially religious symbol - the Quest. Like the image of the solitary hero, this image - a Journey which leads to the discovery of ultimate meaning and which involves courage and self-denial - recurs frequently in the early poetry, receiving its most extensive treatment in the sonnet sequence of 19^1 2 entitled simply The Quest . Behl|nd these poems lies Auden'8 fascination for, what may be called an anthropological aspect of religioni folk-lore and fairy• tale. In this modem setting the traditional figures of folk-tales make their appearance in traditional situations, Now everyone knows the hero must choose the old horse. Abstain from liquor and sexual intercourse (1) LI. 91^i-9^5. (2) Published in 19^1, the sequence is a collection of twenty poems all of which are sonnets with the exception of the third whiclf has twenty-one lines. 221. And look out for a stranded fish to be kind tot Now everyone thinks he could find, had he a mind to Th& way through the waste to the chapel in the rock (xzv) He parried every question thit they hurled, *What did the Braperor tell y»u7* *Not to push?* *What is the greatest wonder of the world?* (xvz) The notion of a quest features priminently in nearly all of the ancient sagas and their praaence is clearly discernible here. But there is also, throughout the sequence, the more subtle presene|8 of a specifically Christian sagat the greatest of the English Quest stories - Pilgrim*s Progress. Nor all his weeping ways thrjough weary wastes he found The castle where his Oreaterl Hallows are interned! (2V) And when Truth met him and put out her hand Re clung in panic to his tall belief (VZ) Within those gates all opening begins All Journeys die here; wish and weight are lifted. (XX) The religious implications in this sequence are clear, and come as a kind of fulfilment of all that has been suggested earlier. Apart from the Baroque eclogue Age of Anxiety, the image appears only as a faint echo in the later poetry, and Horae Calnonicae gives the impression of the search ended, the destination reached. 222. Because of the frequency witk which the theme occurs in the early work, there is an atiiosphere of restlessness and nervous excitement about this poetry which contrasts strongly with the wearily ironloa and cynically amused tones of the early Eliot. The geieral impression that is left by the life and work of ELiot is one in which the idea of the Quest has been stiod on its head. The personal movements of Eliot and Aiden have been along parallel lines but in opposite directions. The theme of searching deeply embedded in Four Quartets turns out to be a retracing of steps to the recovery of what has been lost. The Journey into the future ends in the discovery of the past And the end of all our explolring Mill be to arrive where we started , And know the place for the fjlrst time . The discovery of the Holy Grail -| the myth which under• lies The Waste Land - is, of oouxse, a quest-myth, but the theme is treated throughout the poem Mith a~lprofound irony. In this decayed hole among ijhe mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, cnly the wind's home'^. (1) Four Quartets, p. ^3. (2) Collected Poems, p. 76. 223. And in the early volumes (1917 and 1920), the possibility of a quest is never allowed to ar:Lse« for in Bliot *8 world no-one ever has the strengtli to venture beyond the trivial round. His view of tlie human condition is consequently far more pessimistic than Auden*s. Where Bliot draws a world in which the complete futility of human effort and the powerlessnes i of human love predominate, Auden in his early vilumes depicts (less movingly and penetratingly) one ii whioh human endeavour, however unsuccessful, is of some iralue, and humem affection, however weak and selfish, is capable of alleviating the squalid conditions under whioh it is experienced. Both poets have used the device of *placing* their human figures in characteristic ijandscapes, and the differences between the two men, |not only in artistic apprehension and poetic techniqnelt, but in religions sensibility, show up clearly when a comparison of the ways in whioh they use the device, is made. Where Bliot takes his reader into the nerve-centres of his oivilisation - Prufrock and the lady occupied in their ceaseless and pointless social activities - and forces him to feel and see this world fifom the inside, Auden compels the reader to stand away from it, to survey the whole scene from outside and above The image of the (l) e.g. Poems XXIV, XgZS. (Poeris 1930 p. 7@i P* 87). 22h. Waste K/and is admittedly a symbol by which the chaos of human life is expressed, but it oi>erates much more deeply too. Han's fate and that of the i>hysical creation become bound up with each other. The pi^stures of dirty cities and barren mountains are more thai convenient images of a purely human situation. In, for example. The Love Song of ^, Alfred Pmfrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night the squalor of human life is in8ei;>arable from the meanness of its physical environment. Man is seen as a part, and a completely powerless part, of a^ unregenerate physical world. By contrast, the distinction between man and the rest of the world is a constant f )ature of Auden's thought. Man is seen as a maker and shaper of things. Consequently even his abortive attempts at assorting himself over his enviroziraent are in a small way triumphant I Noises at dawn will bring Freedom for some, but not this peace No bird can contradicti passing, but is sufficient now For something fulfilled this hour, loved or endured^. His vision of the world, as it is embodied in these early poems, is not a particularly happr or hopeful onet the land which he describes is desola|ket the situation in which the human being finds himself is me in which salvation is needed. Poems like Nos. SI anl XII of Poems 19^0 contain the characteristic images of this early periods (1) Poem XXVI (Poems 1930 p. 82) 225. •disiaantled «ashing-floors*, 'snaiehes of tramline*, 'ramshaokle engine* (Poem Xl), *8noIcelea8 ohimneys, damaged bridgest rotting t^barves and oboked oanals* (Poem XXIZ) - images of decay and disintegration, but bis vision does not arouse tbe sane apprebension of hopelessness and degradation as sjliot's early verse does. Tbis is partly because Auden*8 maimer, tbougb less ironical, is more detaebed (tre are more aware of tbe poet 'making* tbe poetry)t but also because tbe buman figures are oecaeionally given some degree of self-awareness and are set over against tbe landscape, aid also because be injects into tbe verse notes of djanger and escitement xjbicb Bliot resolutely escludes Near you, taller tban grass. Ears poise before decision Terrors dratfing. closer and Closer, winter landscape, fox's deatb^t Wbere Bliot in bis early poems ie content to dissect and depictI Auden*8 words contain an urgent desire for discovering tbat new mode of life wbicb will enable buman communication to be resumed and bnman action to take on significance. Sometimes, as in Poem XI, tbis urgency is expressed witb subtlety (1) Poems 1?30. p. 56. (2) Ibid., PP 75* 226. ....p you ma^ hear the wind Arriving from the ignorant saa To hunt itself on pane^ or bark of elm Uhero sap unhaffled rises, baing spring; But frequently we are palmed off with a cheap senaational- ism as in the closing lines of Poam SVXZ If we really want to live, we*d better start at once to tryt If we don't, it doesn't matter, but we'd better start to die. In much of his early work Aaden strives to create jibility in human the atmosphere of crisis - a possji In their lassitude, experience Bliot will not admit. *s figures fail to even the most self-aware of Sliot< recognise the necessity for making decisions and are unable to arouse themselves to pe|rform any kind of meaningful act Not Z am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be' But Auden forces nearly every moment to its crisis, so that even (in) the little love lyri •ffhat'a on your Mind* (Poem XIIZ) closes .with the line 2 Strike for the heart and havle me there . Many attempts at the evocation of crisis in Poems 1930 and Look Strangert result in little more than political postiuring. The verse is laboured!, the situations melodramatic and the admonitions slightly ridiculous. (l) *ThQ Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrook*, Collected Poems. p. 15* ^2) Poems 1930. p. 58. 227. The ubiquitous background of mysterious frontier-wars and political tensions) of spies i leaders, emd beroes, frequently suggest tbe scboolboy adventure story, and it is significant that on bis retarn from tbe Civil Uar in Spain Auden remained silent ab)ut bis first-band experience of actual conflict. Tie amused, self-critical tones and ironic backward glances of the poem *August for the people*^, however, as well as the methods he adopted in editing bis early poems, reveal tbat he was not unaware that much of what he bad written had an 2 adolescent ring . There are, nevertheless, many poems in this first volume in which the creation of the desperateness of tbe human condition and the urgent need for action does not depend upon,schoolboy trappings «r slick references to current tense international situ4tions. Tbe words of e, at the close of tbe admonition which come, for exampJ poem *It was Easter* (No. XV) • we kiiow that love Needs death, death of the g]|>ain, our death. Death of tbe old gangt ... (^) Look StrangerI pp. 63-66. (2) Although J. tfarren Beach in The Making of the Auden Cai.non is right to claim that Auden edited his own work on ideological linesi it is alno true, as the versiions of *Bere on tbe cr&pped grans* show, that he was sensitive to early te6hnica:|. crudities. (3) Op* ott,, p. 66. 228. do not sound either empty or ohiltjlish because they come at the end of a long poem in which the picture of the dislocation and disturbance of modem society has been prepared for by a more general ini light into personal loneliness and bewilderment which predicament and which is conveyed is the universal human in the controlled, imaginative language Auden is capable of writing. The paradosical juxtaposition of life and death, and the presence, in the midst of vitalitr and serenity, of human suffering and deformity, is the tieme of the first stanza. The use of the Baster images causss the recollection of the ultimate connection between ijife and death, and, as in Eliot's gaste Land, the power sf life reasserting itself at this particular season of the year serves only to emphasise the pitifulness of human experience But thinking so Z cams at once l^ere solitary man sat weeping on a bench Hanging his head down, with his mouth distorted Helpless and ugly as an embxyo chicken^. But whereas Bliot depicts an existence in which the acceptance of emptiness and deatli has already taken place Auden goes on to suggest the painful growth of awareness to the dislocation of life and tie presence of suffering and death and the necessity for discovering meaning in (l) The Plaking of The Auden Oancn, p. 61 229 i this Jumbled collection of events In me so absolute unity of evening And field and distance was iii me for peace, ffas over me in feeling witho at forgetting miose ducks* indifference, tiiat friend*s hysteria". And in tbe third section Auden writes of the transience of life and the need men have for accepting into their own experience the fact of death. It has become the praotioe for editors of verse anthologies to break up 2 this poem and publish its sections separately • The procedure is far from satlsfaotor^, for the publication by itself, empbaisises of the final section for example, tones of the poet, disproportionately the hectoring appreciation of the narrows the sense of crisis to an immediate political situation, and prevents the direct warnings fx^m drawing power, as they were clearly intended to, from the clearp bright images of the preced• ing section As I ishall leave the summer. see autumn come Focussing stars more sharply in the sky, See froaen buzzard flipped (1) Tbe Making of the Auden Canon, p. 63. (2) Even Richard Hoggart in his selection of Auden*s poems for school study publ^ shes this section separately. (3) op. cit., p« 65. 230. Despite the evident success i»f many poems in those early volumes, it cannot be said lihat Auden's insight into the sickness and distortion of soiiety and the crisis in the contemporary world is conveyed with as much poetic . power as Eliot's apprehension of (degradation and futility. But the purpose hero is not a comparison of poetic merit, it is an endeavour to illuminate lifferonoes of religious outlookI differences which make themselves felt even at tho stage of their 'pre-Christjlan' poetry. Sfeither man ban be said to have undergone a conversion-experience which involved a sudden radical change of belief and sensibility. Zn the work of both , clear patterns of an evolutionary kind can be traced, Consequently, Eliot's early preoccupation, not with humlan suffering and change - aspects of life which might suglsest self-awareness and dignity - but with the more s trlctly philosophical problem of Appoaranee and Reality combined with a con- vietion of the helplessness of man in a circular kind of existence, helps to explain why his attitude towards redeiaption as presented in the later poems frequently has the appearemoe of an escape f|rom life and time and •9ldom suggests the ecstatic joy jwhich acccmpanios the Christian vision of salvation. J have tried to show why this is so in what X have already said about the relation- ship between Eliot's belief concGming human nature and 231. the Christian doctrine of Origina.]]| Sin. In Auden*s work, the relationship between the poet e belief and orthodox Christian doctrine is always much closer. For Auden, as for the Christian, the concept of distortion - of man*s nature being warped and twisted - is clearly in evidence. The individual is seen as a creature who, while corrupt and deflected from bis original purpose, is possessed of a self-awareness, and is capable i>f taking, in response to what we may call Grace, action transcend the limits, and transfono tbe conditions of bis corruption. Consequently bis apprehension of man*s ultimate destiny glows, from time to time, witb the same intensity as the Christian vision of heaven He is the Life. Love Him in the World of theFlesh I And at your marriage all its occasions.shall darce for Joy^. When Homage to Clio was published in I96O, Philip Larkin reviewing the volume for ihe periodical Spectator remarked Few poets since Pope have been so committed to their period. It is not only that to be at home in Auden*s poetry wo must recognise Bishop Barnes, Goghlan*s Coffin, Van der Lubbe and all the personalia of *]fast Will and Testament*, (Letter from Icolemd, with Louis Maebhlice) we shall also find the depression, strikes, the hunger marcher^, we shall find Spain and China) and above all we shall (1) For tbe Time Being, p. 12k, 232. encounter not only the age's properties but its obsessionsI feeling inforior to the working class, a se$tis e things needed a new impetus from.somewhere, seeing out of the comer. of an eye tts rise of Fascism, the persecution of the Jews, the gathering dread of the next war that was half projected guilt about the last... /There fallows a quotation 6} from 'The chairs are being brought injy Zt is precisely this dominant and ubiquitous unease that lay at the centra of Auden's verse and which he was so apt to e cpress^ Larkin's review summarises much tiat has been said and written about Auden, and in its- clarity and understanding surpasses many of the much longer critical studies. Yet he too believes that, as a podt, Auden fails when he oeases to act as a critic of ttie immediate social and political environment. The 'abandonment' of Europe and the impending struggle of the Second Tforld Uar, according to Larkin, did irreparable damage to his work. guess is that the peculiar insecurity of pre<«war England sharpenedj his talent in a way that nothing else has^. Zt is tme that Auden does eonvo>[ the 'atmospheric conditions' of the 'twenties and thirties* with great vividness in these early poems, sLnd that much successful verse was produced as criticism ^ad comment on specific sooiai and political issues, but the suggestion that what (1) 'Xniat's Become of tJystah?' The Spectator. July 15 1960, pp. 10l»-105. (2) Zbid., po 10k, 233. lies behind the most successful poetry was little more tban an acute awareness of the *d Boggart's evaluation of Auden as a moralist concerned with the problem of human guilt*^ though not entirely satisfactory, is closer to the truth, for it is the dominant and ubiquitous unease of every human life that is the centiral preoccupation of tie poet. In religious terms ^ it is the condition of men suffering tbe consequences of Original Sin that is his conoom. Criticisms like Larkin*8 verge on mistaking the framework of the building for the building itself) the convenient images for the reality they are intended to bonvay. Inevitably tbe poet mirrors bis age, and the social and political climate of tbe twenties and thirties provided a fund of apt symbols by which Auden could convey his own attitudes and feelings, and be certain tbat he would be understood. Although prompted by it, his vision extends far beyond a sensitivity to a contemporary siljuation. Recognisable *personalities* march across the pages and popular psychologioal and political theoiFies appear in tbe lives, but at bottom (it becomes clear in Another Time) the concern is religious and personal. Tbe subject is not (l) Attden. An Introduction EssJiv. p. ^k. 23^. the distress of Europe, but self-doubting man. Zf it is true that Auden's sjbrength lies in his identification with the tensions 9f a time and place, then the poem from Look Strangert 'Easily, my dear you move, easily your head' (XXZ) musk be accounted as one of the most forceful he has ever written, for here there is the closest possible identific|ations. Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Roosevelt, bankruptcy, political platform all make their appearanc|e and are an integral part of the poem Summoned by such a music from our time. Such images to audience come| As vanity cannot dispel nor Ibless^i But its real strength lies, not in the presentation of the tensions of a particular tims and place, however accurately rendered, but in the investigation of a permanent human conditioni the experience of human love in a world which Opposes and denies it. Zt is a love poem of a peculiar kind, ooneem«d not merely with the exprei9sion of an individual emotion, but with the interaction of two worlds - the itrivato and the public - in the experience of the emotioni Zn this respect there is a faint resemblance to Donne'4 poem 'Busie old foole, (1) Look Stranger! p. 50. 235. unruly Sonne*, but where the recollection of the world outside causes Oonne, in a big gesture, to dismiss it as unreal and worthless, in comparison to his own world of love, in Auden*8 poem the private world of the lover becomes unreal if it is cut off from the distresses of the world which surrounds the lev 9. Auden has said much about tbe relation between two otier worlds 1 Art and Reality, and tbe dangers of confusing them^. And as there is the dangerous temptation to believe in the world of artistic creation as autonomous and real, so there is tbe danger of retreating into a private world of love and regarding it as self-existent and self-explanatory. Both the lover and the artist possese the same kind of power. Both can impose a credibls pattezti on the confusion of everyday experience, But unlike Art whose purpose is to provide an analogy or real living, love is actually a part of tbat real livilng and must be related to every other part. Hence tbe patterns the lover is tempted to make by withdrawal have a dangerous unreality He from these lands of terrijfying mottoes £lakes worlds as innocent as Beatrix Potter*s) Easy for him to find in youx face The pcol of silence and tbeI tower of grace, To conjure a camera into a wishing rose^) (1) Of. *The Poet and the City* in The Dyer*s Hand. pp. 72-89. Caliban*a epeeofe in Tbe Sea and tbe Milfror. For the Time Being.PP. 31-58 ) New Tear Letter, p. T^t •In Memory of W.B. Teats*. (tollected Shorter Poems, p. 65. (2) y.ook Styanfierl p. 50. 236. Authentic existence demands the refusal to impose easy patterns, and involves the painful recognition of the limitations of human powers, the iwareness of change and the cruelties and imperfections o? love. Zt is here, in the expression of personal bewlldsrraent and frustration, that Auden's verse is at its liveliest. A choice was killed by every childish illness, The boiling tears among the hothouse plants, The rigid promise fractured in the garden. And the long aunto^. Unlike Eliot's poem Animula khioh pictures the gradual corruption of a human life from birth to death, these stansas of Auden speak, mor» subtly, about the gradual growth of the awareness o^ corruption. Znnoeenoe is never a real human experience in the poet's vision, just as it never is in the Christian view. The world he depicts is already cormpt, and ionodenee is a dream, a haunting memory of something which has been lost, somehow, before it has been enjoy3d. The myth of the Fall in the Garden appears frequently in the poetry, and Eden always lies out of the reachj of man, dimly longed for, but far beyOnd the hope of rlecovery • The Christian belief about the nature of man id close to the surface (1) Look StrangerI p. 51* (2) Cf. Six Sonnets Zn Time of !^ar. 237. of this particular poem, not merely because the poet appears to believe in the regenerative power of love, but because, like 'the promise in the human existence is flawed and disserted. Beauty and garden', the whole of Goodness are not necessarily conn 0, be deaf mien hatred would proffer heir immediate pleasure, And glory swap her fascinating rubbish For your one treasure . Spears, in his long study of] Auden's work, contends that, in this second volume Look Strangerl the poet offers two principal forms of esejapism - religion and romantic love . This is an inaccurate over-simplification. Religion, as a conscious relatioiship with some kind of Divine Being, hardly appears at sll, and therefore cannot be Offered as a way of escjape, and romantic love. (1) Look Stranger! p. 52^ (2) The Disenchanted Zsland. p. 238. though occasionally seen as a pantioea for all ills, is generally treated with a high degreej[^realism. In, for example, the lyric *May with its :.ight behaving* the connection between the corruptiono f the world and human love is again stressed. Th^re is no escape here. Tbe real world is tbe world in which there is confusion and pain . The dying master sinks toraeijited In the admirers* ring, Tbe unjust walk the earth^. for the poem is built up around a central image of the Fall of the Adam. It is in consechuence, for Auden understands the theological irapliiiationis perfectly, a poetic exposition of the meaning off Original Sin. Ve stand with shaded eye The dangerous apple taken These are unquestionably the most effective lines of the poem. The curious Juxtaposition of the words *shaded* and *eye* with their suggestions <^f darkness and light, ignorance and knowledge, acourateJ.y conveys the doubleness of the human conditioni man*s acquiescence in evil and attempt at self-deception as well as his painful self- awareness. Where there should shine the bright clarity of innocence there is only the half-darkness of (1) Look Stranger! p. kl, 239. acknowledged guilt.. Innocence is not the refusal to be corrupted, it is the inability to recognise evil. Auden sees man*s position as bein^ far from innocenti he is aware Of his predicament, yet unaMe to change it, for even love, far from being the insiirument of release, is itself caught up in the pattern o^ feableness and guilt Before the evil and the good How insufficient is The endearment and tbe look. This same belief in the connection between the weakness of love and the corruption of the world is tbe theme of poems IIIi *Our hunting fathers* and XSVIII *Oear though the night is gone*, In the first of these poems Auden casts an ironical eye at evolutionary theories as he contrasts animal and human life. Real humanity entails not merely the possession of the gifts of reason and love, but the curse of guilt. !?bero there is choice to love there is also cause to. regret. The animal world knowing neither reaeon nor love is also totally unaware of remorse or guilt. tfho nurtured in that fine tiadition Predicted tbe result, Guessed love by nature suited to The intricate ways of guilt^ ? The second poem is a drooping lilitle lyric about tbe deoeitfulness of the love relationship. Here there is (l) Look Stranger! p. 17 2^0. pity in Auden's treatment of a woi'ld in which every emotional experience is without significance Zndifferent to those Vho sit with hostile eyes Zn pairs on every bed, Arms around each other's neol^s, Znert and vaguely sad^. The preaching tone which Anden all too easily adopts is notioeably absent here, and the pity stems from his sensitivity to the universal expe rience of fmstration and hopelessness, ^ere is some similarity between this poem (XX?ZZZ) and the one discussed earliert 'Easily ray dear, yOu move ..i...', for ths same problem of the connection between private and public life is present. The lover's attempt to dreate a world of his own is a failure. The self-existent world of love where everything makes sense and has its place is Ian illusion which leads only to despair. Zn the ballad '0 what is thejt sound' (VZ), this concept of the deceitfulness and insecurity of human love crops up again. The form iej ideally suited to the poet's purpose and the poem is a technical tour de force. but it is not only tho mounting tension of the rhythm in the growing fear of the soldiers approach that gives it (1) Look Strangerl p. 6l, 2hi. sueb povoT and brillianoeo it Is nhe Inereaslng blandness of the replies to the lover's bre^ithless questions. 0 it must be the fanaer vho i.ives so neari Zt lattst be the farmer so ouniiings so cunning? They have passed the fann al: ready* dear. And no« they are running. The full horror brealss t^hen the lover finds her love betrayed and herself deserted, fa sing the splintered door and burning eyes alone* Probably the finest poem of bh& volume is' the thirtieth* the one entitled 'Birtidav Poem* (To Christopher Isherwood.) The teohaioal dexterity is not obvious, the iwit is not precoeious and the pity is not sentimental. Andon is gently sareastio about the enthusiasm whioh informed his ear|ly idealistio belief in the pover of love Five summers pass and now t^q watch The Baltic from a balconyi the vord is love. Surely one fearless kiss votjld cure The million fevers, a strokljng brush The insensitive refuse from the burning core . But he does not call upon Love tb redeem the world from the 'espanding fear and saveging disaster*, as he did in the.poem which stands as e Prologue to the (1) Look Stranger! p.. 21. (2) Ibid., po 6h» 2U2. oolleotlon , human promises and v<>tfa of Love proved themselves deceitful; Instead, vi.th a hint of irony t;hich does not detract from the genuineness of the tributet he asks Christopher Isheir^ood's 'strict and adult pen* to diagnose the dlseaso and prescribe the cure. At the core of the long poem trhlch was later 2 entitled Ihe Malvegaa » a sllghtl^ different note Is struck These moods give no penaisslbn to be Idle, For men are changed by what they do| And through loss and anger t^o hands of the unlucky Love one another. In a world that Is squalid and crlael, and In lives that are cramped and deformed, men are still capable of making some gestures which assert their Inobilltyo No way of escape is offered, for, as the liolage of the 'hands* makes clear. It Is only a groping .tewaz|d8 love that Is pictured. 0en remain blind and feeble even when they act in this way. There Is a half-bitter reelgnatioln which recognises the experiences of loss and anger even In the effort of loving. Despite, however, the acceptance of the corruption of human integrity In the deceltfulzess of human promises, and the betrayal of human love by the passing of time. Auden*e attitude seldom becomes cynical and never has the (1) O love, the interest itself. in thoughtless Heaven, Make simpler daily the beating of mants heart. (2) KffQk Stranserl.'pR. kZ-kS, appearance of that detached despair which characterises the early verse of Eliot* In, foi esample, the' lyric *Plsh in the unruffled lakes*, (3DYIl)=^ he begins by contrasting the carefreie, instinctiive life of animals with the constricted, self-cdnsoious behaviour of human beings^ but ends with the conviction that this narrow anxious' life possesses a glory wh.ch no animal can know. The poet, unfortunately, is less at home in the 'natural* world than in the human, for thero is a curiously lifeless quality about the images of the fjlsh and the lion in the first stansa which robs the poem »f the necessary power of contrast, for the second stanzjEi. beginning with mockery and ending poignantly is beautifully contrived. The theme is, perhaps, an old one,, but it is given new life as the reader is made to feel that the reproaches and regrets in htiman life Sig^s for folly said and doze Twist our narrow days are an indispensable part Of an extreme which would otherwise not penta|.n the glory. cerebral and deliberately unromaiitlo word 'voluntary*, echoing the Judicious tones of 'l^ must bless, Z must '(l) Look Strangerr p* 66. Zhk, praise, without incurring any sensje of anti-climas. The poem has a nice irony which convejis the ambiguous nature of human lovee The gift is praised but there is the suggestion, qn the one hand, that it It s a petty, self-conscious and unreliable affair, and, on the other, that merely by virtue of its being freely-mad^ it achieves a real dignity and beauty. Zn his sympathetic, but high:|.y critical, study yhe .Makinfl of the A^nden Canon, J. barren Beach dl^vides 1 the poet's development into four ^tages*^. From 1928 to 1936 he maintains that Auden was a Klarxist emd from 1936 to 1939 a Humanisl;. Tho ahoi? t period 1939 to 19^1 saw the change from secular iiumanism to the strictly Christian position, and in the yeurs that followed the working out of this position in s lecific terms. Beach finds these Categories convenient for he is concerned to establish certain principles whic 1 Auden eulopted in the editing of his poetry, and it is probable that the poet*s thinking did follow these lines. But poetry is a more complex matter than the espresslola of intellectual attitudes, so that as a guide to the understanding of the verse itself, the *four stages* tend to be misleading. (1) Beach, pp. 231-232. 2k5. Z have already tried to show how ^he political interests of the first two volumes (from tho Marxist period) are subordinate to Auden *8 concern wl :h psychological and emotional problems, and that the [tctual Marxist content is negligible. The story is slightly differ »nt when wo come to the plays, for tetkon as a whole, they are obvious in attitude and didactic in intention. Here political theories and social criticisms ara precise in their references and directly expressed. Auden, at this time, like Brecht ^ seems to have regard ad contemporary drama not as a way of giving deligjht anS increasing individual sensibility^ but as an instrument for teaching and goading into action. 7et it is possible to detach most of the best poetry from its contest in the plays in such a way as to retain its poetic slgnifioance while robbing it of any political relevance. Unlike Eliot's poetic dramas in which the lemguage intensifies into poetry at the behest of the action, Auden'e best speeches in verse have the appearance of intermeasos and tend to hold the action up rather than press it forward. Of the six plays, or theatrioal devices, which Auden had a hand in, the most obviously political are The Dance of Peath produced in 1933 and the one in which he first collaborated with Chrlstjopher Zshorwood in 1935 Zh6, The Dog Beneath the Skin* Uith tte exception of a few witty touches and satirical flourishes The Dance of Death is an insignificant work seldom rising above the level of strained farce • The Doa Beneath the Skin is another matter, and, thou^ unmanageable CLS a stage production, contains a number of songs and choruses which are memorable. 2 Auden included two of them 'Happy | the hare at morning' and 'Now through ni^t's caressing grip'*' in his Collected Shorter Poems in 1950 * The second of these two choruses 'Now through night's caressing grip' could be taken fr»m its context and it stands unchanged. reprinted without alteration, and with the exception of a single unimportant word, in Colleotod Shorter Poems. Zt is ulsod in the fifth scene lullaby sung Over of The poe^ Beneath the Skin as a Alan and his companion* Zt is inloidental to the action of the play, (as most of the fift{ti scene is)^ and is a (1) Spears has called it 'Auden* s only real experiment in the writing of propaganda (The Disenchanted Zsland. p* 87)* (a) The Dog Beneath the Skin, pp . 91-92. (3) Zbid., pp. 115-116. <") Collected Shorter Poems* pp. 62 and 247-22»8 respectively. (3) Zt was presumably intended ^s a comic interlude, but the script contains the footlnote t *Zn a performance the ensuing dialogue should probably be out.* (p. 50). zUy. simple, quiet littlo prayer for protection against sinister forces, and moves with tljie ease and relaxed oonfidence of the best of Auden's lyrics. The first of these poems is t chorus occurring as an interlude between two stages oi' Alan Norman's journeys the incidents on the train and these in Paradise Park. And presumably it is intended to ]>emlnd the audience of the meaning of the plays namely, the decay of the established Snglish middle classed and the necessity for taking immediate action in a revolutionary direction. The section of the chorus which boglns How comely are his places of refuge and the tabernacles of h: s peace, ^e new books upon the morning table, the lawns and the afternoon terracest with its rather obvious mock-relitfious tone sounds like a tirade against the comfortable security of the upper-middle clasi>ee. But the thou^t- pattem of the poem is confused bocause those tones are di And Although he returns to the suiTferlngs of the down• trodden in the penultimate lino, Lt is only after introducing images.of cultural activity that extend far beyond specific references to Bnglish middle-class social 2k6. behaviour, the whole structure of human society is being criticised* Moreover the two sections of the chorus are poorly integrated* Vhat immediately precedes the fdenunciation' of comfortable lif«i is the elaboration of a theme familiar in Auden'o work • the contrast of the world of brute creation with the xforld of human beings { the world of mindless complacency with that of painful selfoawareness• Or best of all the mineral stars disintegration But what can man do, who can whistle tunes by heart * Zt aeeiao that Auden was aware of ihese flaws, for the revision of the poem in 1950 showti the poet not mtsrely eradicating specific political rorerenoes but attempting to eliminate some of the confusioit* He tries to bridge the gap between the sections by substituting the line What can he do but defend hitpself from his knowledge? for the somewhat petulant phrase Ve will show you what he has done* There is an indication here of th^ frame of mind expressed in the essay Psychology and Art ±ii which he somewhat crudely states the view that ther^ are only two kinds of art I didactic art and escape art'f, a view which tends to (l) The first of these two lines is omitted in Collected Shorter Poems. (2} Quoted by Bayley in The Romailtic Survival, p. IkO, Zk9. denigrate the value of artistic ea^perienoe. Here in the poem the comfortable surroundings and the music that is played become ways of warding off the terrifying knowledge of inevitable a^ad universal suffering and decay. His reading of Kierkegaard probably rolnforcod a belief in Art as illusory, and The Shield o:' Achilles contains poema which indldate that Auden bolleved it necessary to advance through the three stages ^thich Kierkegaard spoke of I from the Jiesthetie through tlie Moral to the Religious, whore, presumably, the reality of suffering and death is willingly accepted. The objection that Auden*s rovisiohs rob the opening lines of the second section of tholr previous vigour and asperity has some Justification f<»r alterations which clarify the poem in certain direc iione tend to create confusion in others. The-changes did not appear until 1950 and it is impossible to discover exactly when Auden decided upon them* But only thre«i years after Jho Dog Beneath the Skin he produced a voJ.ume of new poetry which had much in common with the spirili of these alterations. The twenty-first poem of this ColJ.eotlon^ bears comparison with the chorus that has been und^r discussion because Auden again takes up the theme of suffering - this time tragic suffering - and develop^s ^t in an allied, though X (1) Another Time, p. k7. 250. slightly different way About suffering they wore never wrong. The Old Masters I how vdll tliey understood Zts human positions how it tiakes place miile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along} Apart from suggesting the sensation of isolation experienced by every sufferer when he sees tho world continuing on its way as though nothing had hapjtened, Auden makes the point that all suffering, however significEuit, appears to go unnoticed in the lives of o::dinary men* This does not mean that the tragic events aire unimportant, the suggestion is simply that life has somehow to continue in the middle of pain and death* Ex;>r®seed baldly, the argument may sound callous, but Aiden writes with a warmth and sympathy that is not umally associated with his name, and in such a way as to weave the tragic events themselves into the texture of th) lives of those very men who appear to be oblivious of them* and the expens ve delicate ship that must havs seen Something amaaing, a boy falling out of the sky. Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. Zn the later sequence Horae Canonicae the theme appears againI developed at greater lenglfch and with specific reference to the Christian doctriie of the Atonement - the meaning and application in tha lives of ordinary men of Christ's suffering and death upon the cross. 251. Another Time is probably the most significant of t|:an8itlonal work giving Auden*8 volumes in that it is aharlenin g both in style the first clear evidence of a and attitude on the part of the p»et. As far as technique is concerned many of the defects >f the later volume make their first appearance here In, for example, the first poem *Urapped in a yielding air, beside*^ wit has turned into mannerism and there i b a wealth of grandiloquent but yague gesturing The friendless and unhated snone Lies everywhere about him. The Brothered-Ohe,' the Not-.'Alone , The brothered emd the hated At t±ta@B there is an imaginative orudity as in the stanza from the poem later entitiled Crisis where the reader cannot help but feel that the poet is straining after effect 0 the striped and vigorous t iger con move With style through the borough of murder; the ape Is really at home in theparis h Of grimacing and licking I. •. 2 And in a poem like Oxford over-sulbtlety of reference and imprecision of imagery result in an obscurity that unfortunately has become a featuzje of much of Auden*s later poetry. (1) Another Time, pp. I3-I6. (2) Ibid., p. 52. 252. Oh, if that thoughtless almott natural world Vould snatch his sorrow to h^r loving sensual heart I But he is Bros and must hate what most he lovesi And she is of Natural Nature Can only love herself.^ On the other hand, there are poems which are as skilful and moving as anything in the earlier volumes. The seven-lined 'Modoigal' *0 lurcher-loving collier* comes close to being a perfect raoiem lyric, and the conversational style for which he appeared to be striving in Poems 1930 and Look Stranger! is managed here with ease and naturalness wherever it is attempted. Moreover with the adoption of a more relaxled attitude and a quieter tone Auden abandons his previous roles of detached observer and condescending orator so that the loss of nervous energy -and compel ling excitement is compensated for by a deeper emotional expressiveness and a greater warmth. The Prophc ts, Brussels in Ifinter. In Memory of W.B. Yeats, as well as the poem already mentioned Musee des Beaux Arts, ^e all examples of the increased humanity of his attitude. Zn New Year Letter, publishe d a year later than Another Time, the poet traces hiii own spiritual, intellectual and artistic progress. This long poem Is M Another Time, p. 23. 253. a coherent and final statement, iiji the sense that it is a record of change taking place. | In poems like *Hell is neither here nor there*,. •Undel'neath the leaves of life *, and 1st September 1939 spe )ifioally religious considerations come to the surface, while in Spain. Gare du Midi. and The Capital the vestiges of the political and social consciousness, for which Auden was so admired in the thirties, can b9 found. Yet even in Spain. a poem written for the purpose of raising funds for the *Medioal Aid for Spain* campaign there is the feeling that Auden is further removed from the immedlato crisis than he was in many of the poems of earlier volumes. The stanssas beginning with the word *Tomorrow* and containing Auden*s vision of the future beyond the war are peculiarly unconvincing i n comparison to his description of the struggle itsel f To-day the makeshift consoletlons; the shared cigarette. The cetrds in the candle-lit barn and the scraping concert, The masculine Jokes| to* day the . Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting . It seems that Auden*s vision as (, poet is confined to this kind of struggle which is tlie only reality in the human condition. The war iji Spain is merely the image (l) Another Time, p. 106. 25^. by which this reality is expressed!. There are, of course, the topical references .•. the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting but the poem ends with a cluster (if images which suggest that the tensions and frustration? of human life are not paused by a particular confluence of historical circumstances but a permanent condition in whiclji men have to live and act and discover meaning. The stars are deads the aninals will not looks We are left alone with our day, and the time is short and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help or pardon. Although the words *the time is short* may indicate, in this context, some kind of call t> action, what the stanaa communicates more deeply is an experience of bewilderment and desolation. The expending of powers on pamphlets and meetings, like the fitting of the war in Spain, may be necessary at certain moments la history, but it fails to give men ultimate satisfabtion, or even release them from the sense of loss. The problem is a religious One and a re-statement of the theme more often conveyed in Audeifs Bden imagery. It is interesting to note that fourteen years later he uses a line very similar to the one in Spain(*Ue are left alone tilth our feat*) in attempting to convey the emptiness and shame which feillows 255. on the crucifixion . This section of Another Time (Occasional Poems) contains also: 1st September 1939 ^n which the same Observation about the lack of purpose and frightened bewilderment in human life is mad^ more explicitly, but more sentimentally. All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of homei Lest we should see where we $ire, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Uho have never been happy or good. This particular image of children wandering frightened in a wood is repeated near the beginning of Christmas Oratoirio. Alone, alone about a dreadful wood Of conscious evil runs a loejt mazd&ind. Dreading to find its Father Lest it find The Goodness it has dreaded Is not goods Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood^. Auden hardly paused in any of the poems of Another Time to investigate the cause of man*s sense of fear and loss. This was left to New Year Letter. For the Time Being, and The Age of Anxiety. But the twelfth poem, entitled afterwards He^l-'. gives a slight indication of the way (1) Nones, p. k6, (2) p* 63. See also the Prologije to Wew Year Letter. ^ich cannot stop us taking our walks alone. Scared of the unknown unconditional dark, Down the avenues of our pongingi (3) Another Time, p. 32. 256i his mind was working. Zn 'Hell ±t neither here nor there*, the religious and philosophical difficulties of the relation between Being and Becoaiiig are touched upon for the first time* But the poem is elusive and Auden is content with the oblique suggestitin that the meaning of Hell, which 'is hot anywhere', is somehow connected with confusing the two. A short time after the pUbli<»ation of New Year Letter. Francis Scarfs produced his criti in which, after making a few 6bse:*vations about the way Auden*s work has always tended to show man in a * social setting* * observations which hav^ the familiar ring - he went on to remark He has bothered hardly at all about man's relation to nature, or about such. end 'problems as life, death, eternity, which have occupied Eliot . It is tarue that themes such as Sc irfe mentions crop up more obviously and frequently sinse the publication of Audeh and After even so, the criticism seems to rely too heavily on the reputation Auden hid acquired by 19^0 of the poet of the 'social consciousjiess'. Throughout all of thoso early volumes with their insistent imagery of the industrial landscape there is an implicit questioning of the place of the human being in the context of a (l) Soarfe, p* 21. 257. natural order upon tfhioh he has imboaed bis vill. Moreovert thero are a oonsiderablo number of poems in Another Tine alone ^hloh at least ]R±VQ the appearance of a deep oonoern over *end-problems* of life and death, Possiblyp howevert Soarfe is implying more than is openly stated* especially as the olomment oeeurs in a oonaparison of Auden and Bliot. The title of Auden*s oolleotion Another Time is significant, for the most interesting of the poems concerned T^ith life and death are those vhioh have the problem of ti me recurring through them. Xf tje compare Auden*s troaljment of this motif «rith that of Sliot tre may see the possible ioplioations of Soarfe * s comment. The predioas^ent of man living in a time-^sequenoe v»as ^liot*s moeit intense preoccupation and he presents the problem in an entirely different xsay from Auden. Eliot sees the m(|>taphysical dimensions of the problem much more clearly, and connects it moreover t^ith a personal viet? of tbe nature of Appearance and Reality in human life. In his uork, life in time becomes an appearanc» from vrhioh man must discover a «ay of escape^ an unreality given meaning only by the entrance of the Stem all the intersection of the timoless moment. Henoe tha almost esclusive concentration upon the Christian doctrine of the Znoamation; Auden*s attitude, especially in the earlier 238. work. Is G3ore conventional and moze eslstential. The metaphyeieal problem does not Interest himi tho sufferings and guilt of individual raen in specifie situations occupy tbe centre of his attention. For Auden time is a reality and is pei sonified over and over again^ as a destroyer and corrupter bringing frustration and Borrow into human lives. Even in his specifically Christian verse the mbtaphysioal c[uestion remains a side- issue» for it is the reconciliation of man tvith his condition of frustration and guiln that ^^is his prime concern. For this reason his moa-i pot^erful verse in later years is centred upon the Gluristian doctrine of reconciliation and salvations tha doctrine most concerned vith the sufferings of humanity, bh® Atonement. (1) Another Time. Poems SVZZE, JISS. Compare his statement in Mod am Canterbury Pilgrims. The various ''kerygmas^ pf Blake, of Latrrence, of Freud, of Elarse, to t^hloh, along vlth most middle- class intellectuals of my geberation, X paid attention between tt^enty and thirty, had one thing in common. They vore all Christiem heresies; that is to say, one cannot imagine their coming into esistenoe except in a oivilieation which claimed to be based0 religiously, on belief that the Uord was made Flesh and dwelt among ujs, and that, in consequence. matter, the natural order, i e real and redeemable, not a shadowy appearance or the cause of evil, and historical time is real and significant{ not meaningless or an endless series of cycles, (p. 38). 259. Auden'e Poetry (2)1 Mew Year Letter and For the Time Being In 19kO a oolleotion of essays by a small number of eminent people was published in England under the title I believe^. Auden was among those who were asked to contribute, and his statement of faith is of some interest. In the first place, it is by no means a Christian apology, but the elaboration of the position taken two years earlier:in an essay called Living 2 Philosophies 1 Morality in an Apge of Chanffl? . Yet, as Spears remarks, the Bpilogue to New Year Letter, dated Autumn 19'^0, is the clear espreesion of a specifi• cally Christian faith. The essay is characteristic of Auden. The tone is dryo the attitude is detached and there is a delight in conceptual complosities. lie quotes with approval the pronouncement "Freedom is the consciousness of necessity"'' cuid declares in a familiar (^) I Believe. The Personal Philosophies of Twenty-three eminent Men and tJomon of our Time. May 19'^0. (2) Nation. GXLVIZ, 26 (2^^ December 1938), pp. 688-91. (3) I Believe, pp. 18-19* 260. phrase that men are born * neither free nor good*^. There is even a statement about the relation of the individual to society tjhioh xjonld appear to give oubetance to 2 Scarfo*s claim about Auden*s attitudes Uan has altrays been a social animal living in communities The individual in vacuo is an intellectual abstraction. The individual is the product of social life; t7ithout it ho oould be no more than a bundle of unconditioned reflezes3o It is surprising therefore to come upon the line in the third part of Wet? Year Letter, published only one year later Aloneness is raan*8 real condition'^. The contradiction in Auden*s thought is, Z believe, only apparent. Taken as a t^hole the autobiographical poem espresses thoughts and feelings t^hich are a logical eis^ension of those contained in the essay. Sut tfhilo these quotations may not be ovidonee of a sudden radical change of belief, they are evidence of a particular interpretation of iaan*s esistence, for the contradiction in htaman life, as seen through the eyes of Auden, is real. To grasp this is to grasp the essential clue to the understanding of Hex? Year Letter, the theme of t?hioh is M I Believe, p. 19o (2) That ho shox9S little concern about the relation of man to Nature and the end problems of life and death. (3) I Believe, p. 19. {h) NetJ Year Letter, line 15h2, p. 69. 261. contained in Montaigne's epigram at the beginning of the poem and the title under which tho American edition was publishedt The Double Man. The English title emphasises the personal element in the poem I Auden *s own feelings of friendship and loyalty, the reason for his choice of the United States of America as a peraanont homo, his misgivings and fears about the international situation in 19^0, his private memories of the English countryside. And those sections where the poet himself stands most clearly in the centre of the picture are, poetically speaking, the most eucoessful. Near the beginning of Part Z for example, the precisely Imagined recollection of events actually experienced gives the recreation of a tense restless atmosphere real power Twelve months ago in Brussels Z Heard the same wishful-thinking si^ As round me, trembling on. their beds Or taut ivith apprehensive dreads. The sleepless guests of Europe lay, A ship abruptly change her course, A train make an unwanted stop, A little crowd smash up a shap. Suspended hatred crystallise Zn visible hostilities^-. The transition from the feverish atmosphere and the uncertainties and fears of Europe to the peace and security in the lives of.the poet and his companions in (l) New Year Letter, pp. 17-18. 262. America is accomplished smoothly and deftly And the same sun vrhose neutral eye The very morning that the war Took action on the Polish floor. Lit up America and on A cottage in Long Xsland shone ^mnere Buxtehude as «e played One of his passaoogliae made Our minds a oivitas of sound . Wokore nothing but assent was found , But the quality of New Year Letter is uneven, and behind the flippant elevemess of the poet*s rhymed octosyllabic couplets there is a greiat deal of pretentious philoso• phising. I cannot agree with Beach's excuse that the poem *••* has no pretension to being a work of 2 imaginative creation* , for there are a number of sections which quite obviously attempt to appeal to the poetic imagination^, and Beach himself admits that the invocation at the end is one such section. There can be no objection, on principle, to philosophy in verse or the assumption of the conversational 'middle stylo*, but tl^e poem disturbs by its disconcerting vacillation between what can be taken as seriously appealing to the poetic (1) Wew Year Letter, pp. 17-18. (2) The Makinfl^ of the Auden Canon, p. 206. (3) e.g. LI. 12-29 208 ff. 806 ff• 103^ ff. 263. imagination, and what can only be of interest to tho admirer of technical skill. As a lesson in dexterity New Yoar Letter could hardly be bettered, but it remains in essence the deliberate, and at times pretentious, verification of 'a point of view*^. Central to the * point of view* are the theological concepts of sin and guilt, freedom and necessity, and the more particularly Klerkegaardian principle that life is a process of 'Becoming* rather than a state of 'Being*. This third principle is not peculiar to the Danish philosopher, but it seems to be from Kierkegaard that Auden draws much in his own attitude. Zn comparison to Eliot he is a far more derivative writer. No author can help being derivative to a certain degree, and Eliot would doubtless have been the firs^t to acknowledge his.debt to the thoughts and efforts of others. But while it is possible to trace.ideas in Eliot*s work back to specific sources in Dante, St. John of the Cross, Puritan theology and behaviour, and E.H. Bradley, he uses his sources in such a way as never to allow his own work to lose its distinctive individuality. Auden, on the other hand, frequently incorporates the theories of others in a way that, however consistent in (l) John Bayley, The Romantic Survival, p. 171. 26h. style, gives his poetry the appearance of a patchwork of ideas. Hew Year Letter is the prime example of this. At his best, however, as in Horae Oemonicae. he is quite capable of weaving his source Material into the fabric of his own deep and convihbing apprehension of Christianity with coherent axid moving results. John Press, in a book which deals with some of the problems Of 'obscurity* in modern poetry, claims that much of the obscurity of Auden*8 early work oomes from his fondness for ringing the changes upon his four main themes - the world of saga, the world Of machinery, and of social engineering, the impei^ding Marxist catastrophe, and the clinical analysis of Oroddeok^. Whether Press is Justified ih referring to these as *thGsies* is debatable} they are often merely technical devices, but it cannot be denied that they are si^ificant features of the early verse. The worlds of *saga* and * machinery* remain prominent in later work, but the intellectual interests of the pOet - the political theories of Marx and the psychological theories of Freud - are replaced by more accurately imagined and deeply-felt Christian attitudes which owe a great deal to the writings of two modern theologians t Soren Kierkegaard and Charles Williams. (l) The Chequer * d Shade» p. 63. 265, It is a etrarige combination of influences, and one whioh, in part, accounts for the comprehensiveness of Auden*8 Christian outlook. Kierkegaard was a Protestant, a mystic and a melanoholipg a man conscious of each individual's personal and unique ^esistontial" relation to Godt^, deeply aware of his (and all men's) guilt, and tormented by the despair which arises out of the knowledge of separation from God. Uilliams was a Catholic, also a mystic, but one who saw the whole universe singing the praises of its Creator. That Auden should have been attracted by Uilliams was probably inevitable, for Williams, like Auden, was an.Anglican High Churchman and a ritualist, and an authority on Dante and Milton, He was a man of wide and varied knowledge, possessed of strongly held and original beliefs about the meaning of romantic love, tho sacramental nature of the universe, and the personal responsibility Of every human being in the 2 cosmic conflict, between Good and Evil . Zn his Zntroduo- tion to the 1956 edition of Williams' history of the Christian Church, Tho Descent of the Dove. Audon describes (1) The phrase is Auden's own; taken from his essay in Modern Canterbury Pilgrims, p. kZ, (2) Cf. the monogrcBi Charles gilliamfl by John Heath-Stubbs in the series tJriters and their ^ork. 266. the book as • a source of intellectual delight and spiritual nourishment which remains Inesshaustible. They met in the offices of the Oxford University Press where for some years Uilliams worked as an editor, and Auden describes their meetings in the following ways . c...... for the first time in my life {^tj felt myself in the presence of personal sanctity. Z had met many good people before who made me feel ashamed of my own short• comings, but in the presence of this man - we never discussed anything but literary business X did not feel ashamed. I felt transformed into a person who was incapable of doing or thinking anything base or unloving. (Z later discovered that he had had a similar effect on many other people.)^ Zt was probably Uilliame who first introduced Auden to the works of Siorkegaard, for he was responsible in 1936 for getting the first English edition of Kierkegaard • 2 published • Moreover, Auden leads us to believe that It was only after hie meeting with tTllliams that his own attention was caught by the Danish theologian. The Christiem religion as seen through the eyes of these two men seemed uniquely fitted to deal with the problems about which Auden was most deeply concerned, and which he investigates at some length in New Year Letter. (1) Modern Canterbury Pilgrims, p. ^H. (2) A. . Hadfield, Ah Zntroduction to Charles tfllliatas. pp. 125-126. 267. Zn the curious bundle of quotations, expositions, aphorisms, references, and verses which accompanies New Year Letter, Kierkegaard is referred to five times and Blaise Pascal three. Though separated by two centuries and many differences in temperament, training and theological background, these two men are linked by one strong tiet the inadequacy of the intellect to provide a foundation for the spiritual life and the necessity for each individual to make an act of faith when faced with the ultimate question of God. For Pascal it is a 'wager' that men have to make - a staking of ones life upon a choice made entirely by faith. For Kierkegaard, it is a leap into darkness - a deliberate choice of the absurd. For both men it is only this act of faith which is able to release the individual from his unbearable experience of separation from God. Kierkegaard makes a clear analysis of the despair which comes upon man in the acknowledgment of his guilt^, coming to the conclusion that despair, though sin and sickness unto death in itself, is unavoidable and necessary in the lives of men for it is the realisation of the meaning of (l) . His most detailed examination of this particular human experience is contained in Sickness unto Death. 268. despair that drives men to make the leap into the unknown^. This paradoxical idea is by no means strange in Christian theology, and can be found in the writings of both St. Paul and St. Augustine, but it is the vocabulary of Kierkegaard that lies behind Auden*s lines • a IJhat except despair Can shape the hero who will dare The desperate oatabasis Znto the snare of the abyss That always lies Just underneath Our Jolly picnic on the heath^ The leap of faith is not one which is made easily for the abyss is not a pleasant place, it is always made with what Kierkegaard called*fear and trembling*. There can be little doubt, despite Lowrie*s efforts in his biography, that Kierkegaard was obsessed with the oonsciousness of his own guilt to the point of morbidity. Auden never manifests this attitude, but it is possible nonetheless to argue that Kierkegaard *s stress upon the necessity for recognising universal guilt caused Auden to treat the problem as he did in New Year Letter. Zn earlier poems Auden makes specific charges{ men are (1) Kierkegaard*s Snglish biographer explains that for the Danish philosopher *.... the whole Importance of despair which in itself is sickness unto death, lies in the fact that instead of pluiSglng a man into metre) outrageous sin, it may prompt him to seek healing throu^ faith.* (Kierkegaard, p. klO), (2) New Year Letter, p. kO. 269. guilty of specific crimess self-deception, class- Qonsclousness, cowardice, lack of generosity, self- oonoern. But there is always the uneasy feeling that guilt is a permanent condition and not occasioned merely by the committing of particular 'crimes'. In New Year Letter he treats the problem in both a personal and theological way for the first time. At the beginning of the poem (ll 233-259)t under the Jo<8ular guise of a detective story, guilt is related, in the usual way, to the disorders of Europe. Tliie situation of our time Siiirrounds us like a baffling crime All meiki are guilty of this specific crime, (l. 259) But he continues in a somewhat surprising vein and as a prelude to a vivid description of the horrors of war and the pains of men he produces the linesi And more and more we are aware However miserable may be Our parish of immediacy. How small it is, how, far beyond. Ubiquitous within the bend' Of an impoverishing sky. Vast spiritual disorders lie. Although the images are vague and portentous, the outlines of the thought are clear. There is a kind of cosmic disruption which man is only a part of, and which he cannot escape from. Later at the close of one of the finest passages in the poem Auden introduces the personal note of 270. guilt. (11. 103^-1152) He employs, rather obviously at first, the technique, which can be seen in the earlier poem The Malvems, of letting his interior emotions and attitudes find expression in the description of particular geographical areas. For fifty-two lines he laboriously explains his Symbolism, but when he comes to Z see the native of my kind As a locality Z love. The limestone moors that stretch from Brough To Hexham and the Roman Vail. a new intensity oomes into the verse. The geographical area is described strongly and precisely, and the * inner* and *outer* scenes weave into one another in a wholly convincing way. His descriptions of the geographical features lead us to a climatic point in the poems There Z dropped pebbles, listened, heard The rosevoir of darkness stirred; *0 deine Mutter i^ehrt dir nicht Vieder. Du selbst bin ich, dein Pflicht TTnd Llebe. Braoh sie jraiir meln Bild.* And X was conscious of my guilt. (l. 11^7-52) - the recognition of the psychological and spiritual condition of the individual. There is no question of guilt for a specific crime; this is merely knowledge of sn iaoscapable situation. One of. Kierkegaard's most famous books, the philosophical treatise Sither/Or ends with a chapter entitled Ultimatum which reads more like a sermon than an argiunent. Xn it the author pronounces in a 271. categorical, but surprisingly joyful, way on the utter sinfulness of man. Time and again, in almost every paragraph, the sentence 'Against God we are always in the wrong' appears^. Just over a hundred lines after Auden's confession of guilt which has Just been quoted, tho poet refers directly to Kierkegaard's remarkable chapter on the guilt of man Zronio Kierkegaard stared long And muttered, 'All are in the wrong.' (ll. I266-67) Again it is necessary to say that Kierkegaard's is not an original insight. The guilt of man before the righteousness of God is part of the orthodox doctrine of 2 Original Sin , but thore, is a great deal of evidence that Auden came.to grasp the meaning of this doctrine by way of Kierkegaard's expositions. Not only do we haye his own acknowledgment of debt, the frequent references to Kierkegaard in essays and notes, but tho echoing of the philosopher's central preoccupations in a poem like New Year Letter. Auden'e remark oh the Importance to Kierkegaard of each individual's 'unique, existential' relation to God has already been referred to. (1) Cf. Either/Or. translated by Lowrie, Vol. ZZ, pp. 281-29*^. (2) Cf. the article oh Original Sin in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 272. Xn the introduction to his own selection of Kierkegaard's writings,. Auden again stresses the centrality of this concept in Kierkegaard's thought. ..... like God each man is aware of his existence as unique^. For Auden, as for Kierkegaard, this uniqueness involves isolation and so is an ambiguous thing. Xt is the result of Original Sin which disrupts the unity in which all men should live, but &|-sOt paradoxically, the only condition in which man can experience a real relation with 2 ' God o Xn New Year Letter Auden gives us the simple, unqualified statement *alonenes8 is man's real condition* (l. 15^2) - a state of affairs which, he somewhat speciously argues, men have been forced to accept by the Xndustrial Revolution. But in the later poem Their Lonely Betters« in the familiar framework of the contrast between the human and animal worlds, he calmly and clearly describes man's isolation and their acceptance of it, as the very hallmark of their humemity. The influence of Charles Uilliams in New Year Letter is less obvious even, though in one of his notes which follow the poem, Auden acknowledges that Williams* book The Descent of the Dove was * the source of many Ideas in (1) Kierkegaard, p. 5. (2) 'Either there exists this paradox, that the Xndivldual as the Xndividual stands in an absolute relation to the Absolute, or Abraham is lost.* ^nd clearly, as far as Kierkegaard is concerned, Abraham cannot be loat/ Fear and Trembliqfi. p. 182. 273. tho poeiB»^. All the Latin quotations in New Year Letter ban be found in T^llliaias* bookt and though there is no way of proving iti Speare* supposition that it is only because of The Descent of the Dove that they are used at all, is probably correct. Purtheroore Williams' history could have supplied Auden both with the title of the American edition of New Year Letter i The Double Man, and also the epigraph from Montaigne. But Auden refers specifically to * ideas* t^hich have their source in Descent of the Dove» and it is in the closing lines of the poeiQ that Tfilliame own attitudes show their influence. Ve fall dovn in the dance, we make The old ridiculous mistake '. But always there are such as you ForgivingI helping what we do, 0 every day in sloop and labour Our life and death are with our neighbour And love illusinotes again The city and the lion's dent The world's great rage, the travel of young oen 1697-1707) In this deeply personal section, which is a hostage to the friendship of Bliaabeth K[ayer, Audon is heavily reliant upon 'ideas* which are fundamental to tfilllaras* thought. Tho line *Our life and death are with our nei^bour*, which contrasts oddly with much he has said before about tho essential loneliness of man, is a 2 direct quotation from The Descent of the Dove . It is (1; Hew Year Letter, p. 15^. (2) The Descent of the Dovoa p. 46. 27^. not neoossary to repeat tvhat has already been said about Audenfs . Interest. in. ipan. ae . a •social?. being, it is only necessary to remesiber it and see hoxt this interest has been transformed. In earlier poetry it seemed necessary . that men demonstrate their unity by aetionf from this point onv overt demonstration is no longer needed. Auden lifts his interest out of the political and social sibere and places it firmly in the religious. Zf this line t9ere an isolated statement original to Auden, it could not suggest a religious context, but coming as it does at the close of an essentially religious poem, and follotjing so quickly upon the quotation from the ponfeeeiona of St. Augustine, the religious implications cannot be ignored. HOTQ significant is the fact that it is a quotation from Charles IJilliams. Consequently it brings ^ith it all the associations of Williams* belief in 'co-inherence* -> the doctrine that the lives of all men are united across the barriers of both space and time, and that all are caught up ultimately in the unity of Christ. This is no more than the Catholic doctrine of the Church, but Williams presented this doctrine tfith a passionate intensity and estended it in some unusual v;ays. One of the images vhich he used to convey the doctrine T:ras the image of the city. It occurs over and over again in The Descent of the Dove and apart from a symbol 275. vhich is intended to convey the unity of men on earth is also an apocalyptic figure of the Kingdom of God ° * . .. the state into t^hich Christendom is called; but, escept in vision, she is not yet ....*^. Auden takes up this image and uses it, not only here but earlier in We^ Year Letter To t^hat conditions \3@ must hov Xn building the Just City not;, (ll. 1523-152^) and, more frequently, in hie essays. Williams himself is building upon, and using images found in the book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine and the x^ritings of St. Augustine, and w® must betfare of tracing Auden*s use of the *city* image only as far as The Descent of the Dove. He has after all, recalled St. Augustine in his use of the word *civitas* earlier in the poem when describing the patterned and harmonious world of art (a city) in contrast to the confused and chaotic world of war-torn Europe And the same sun Lit up America and on A cottage in Long Zsland shone xniere Bustehude as we played One of his passaGaglia*s made Our minds a civitae of sound Uhere nothing but assent was found. For art had set in order sense, And feeling and intelligence, (l. h6-'33) (l) The Descent of the Dove, p. I5. 276. But the reference is a very slight and passing one, for Auden is not really introducing associations of the City of God here, eseept in an Ironic way. The poem clearly follows the pattern of Kierkegaard - helpful and wonderful as the ordered world of art may be, it cannot sex^e as a permanent dwelling-place. It is a world of Being, and life is a constant process of Becoming, of *building the Just City^. Uan has to pass beyond the realm of the Anesthetic, through that of the Bthioal, to that of the Religious^. Hell is the being of the lie That we become if we deny The laws of consclousnosa and claim Becoming and Being are the same, Being in time, and man discrete In will, yet free and eelf-completet (898-903) Both Hoggart and Spears detect another major influence in Auden's work in the writings' of the German theologian Reinhold KTiebtahr; Hoggart remarks of Auden that his important creditors as important as Preud or Mars earlier - have been Kierkegaard and Niebuhr2. (1) Cf. Auden*s explanation of Kierkegaard *s three levels of esperionce in his Intiroduotion to selections from Kierkegaard« pp. 3*-6. (2) Auden. An Introductory Seaav. p. 1^3. 277. And Spears speaks of Niebuhr as one whose impact upon Auden would seem, to be second only to Kierkegaard*s . Both critics are too emphatic in their insistence on Niobuhr*e influence and both became rather vague (at least as far as Hiebuhr*o thought is concerned) when it comes to providing evidence for this debt which Auden apparently owes. It is true that the poet knows the theologian*8 ideas and beliefs intimately. The two men are personal friends and Auden dedicated the volume Kones (1932) to Reinhold and Ursula PTiebuhr. Furthermore he has . reviewed the works of the Protestant theologian in 2 Nation end Hew Republic , but, ideologically, he stands in rather the same relationship to Niebuhr as Bliot stands to T.S. Hulme. There is tuidoubtodly similarity of ideas but little proof that the beliefs of the one are derived from those of the other. Auden may well have learned a great deal from the Qerman theologian but it is difficult to say precisely what this was. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that Niebuhr is not nearly as profound and original a theologian as either Kierkegaard (1) The Disenchanted Island, p. 179. • (2) Nation. CLXZ. Z. {k January, 19^1). pp. 2^-25. A review of Christianity and power politics. New Republic. CIV. 1383 (2 June 19»1). PP. 765-766. A review of The Nature and destiny of man. 278. or Williamst he is systematic rather than creative, concerned witb esamining hie articles of belief rather than discovering their hidden or wider meanings. His language is therefore, far closer to the terminology of orthodox Christian doctrine, so that the mere use of traditional theological words like 'necessity*, *graee*, * freedom*, 'alienated', ".. . .. in Auden's work is not necessarily an indication of Niebuhr's influence. I have already tried to show that a recurrent theme in Auden's poetry is the contrast between tho r natural and human worlds, and the peculiar position in which man finds himself in contrast to that of the animals. His lordship over the world of nature carries with it peculiar responsibilities of choice and self-reflection, experiences of guilt, weakness and self-contradiction. Only men are capable of sinning because only men are divided against.themselves and are capable of making choices. Behind the long passage in New Year Letter which begins The flood of tyranny and force Arises at a double sources ^ lies this particular belief about man. He stands at the meeting-point of the intellectual (and by extension the (1) 11. 1366-1367. 279. spiritual) and the animal (the natural), and dare not choose either at the expense of the other. One of the cax^inal points of Niebuhr*s system, as it is expounded in his most significant work The Nature and Destiny of Man is the reiteration of the doctrine that all sin and guilt arise at the juncture of spirit and nature, in which position man finds himself, for it is only at this point that self-knowledge is a possibility and that freedom, necessity and choice can be realities^. Tiie situation in which man finds himself is one of tension between the forces of nature and spirit. This does not mean that to sin is to relapse into the animal condition. Niebuhr, like Auden, clearly presents the non-self-conscious animal state as one in which sin, an act of the will, is an impossibility. Sin is the wrong choice in circumstances which allow freedom of choice. Guilt is the inevitable consequence of such wrong choice and the doctrine of Original Sin supposes all men to experience it. Anxiety, on the other hand, though equally inevitable, is not a consequence of guilt or sin, but the pre-condition of both and is inherent in man's created condition whether he has sinned or not (l) Niebuhr, Vol. I, pp. 2^ ff., 160, 181 ff. 280. I^an knows more than the immediate natural situation in which he stands, and he constantly seeks to understand his situation in terms of a total situation. Yet he Is unable to define the total human situation without colouring his definition with finite perspectives drawn from his immediate situation « In short, mem, being both free and bound, both limited and limitless is emsious. Ansioty is the inevitable concomitant of the paradox of freedom and fSsiiteness in which man is involved . The resulting experience is one of almost intolerable strain and tension,, and yet it is man's chief glory. It is not only in Wew Year Letter that Audon embodies his awareness of this paradoxical situation which at the same time is glorious. In the love lyrics man is seen as a creature who can never give himself wholly in any.particular way. He can never be undivided or love without being aware of that ideal freedom which prevents him from accepting his own limitations even in 2 the middle of the most self-forgetful experience . (1) Niebuhr, Vol. I, p. 19^. He refers to Kierkegaard in a footnote in the course of this discussion and owes a great deal of what he says to his reading of the Danish philosopher. (2) 'Lay your sleeping head my love' 'Underneath tho abject willow' 'Pish in the unruffled lakes' 281. It must be remembered that anxiety is not sin, and as Niebuhr 8ay8^,js1he basis of creativity as well as the pre-condition of sin, for man refuses to accept his apparent limitations and strives to go beyond the natural boundaries of his existence. This ability is denied to the animal world. In the poem Their Lonely Betters Auden uses the theme of human language to adumbrate these beliefs. Man's self-awareness and powers of creation are seen to be embodied in the means by which he has chosen to express himself. Again Auden refers to the loneliness8 to the inescapable isolation and suffering that such 'gifts' bring. Let them leave language to their lonely betters, ^o count some days and long for certain letters; l^e, too, make noises when we laugh or weep, ISorda are for those with promises to keep2. Language is the symbol of man's painful but wonderful separation from the rest of creation. Man finds himself bound by the necessities of natures to the time-process, to decay and death, but also free in so far as he is able to view the process from outside} to be conscious of his own mentality and his desire 'to understand his situation (1) The Nature and Destiny of Man. Vol. I., p« 195. (2) liones, p. 15. 282. in terms of a total situation*. It is this unavoidable tneslou which creates anxiety, which,. In turn is the necessary pre-condition of his ability both to sin No one of them was capable of lying and to create Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme Assumed responsibility for time. The resemblance to Niebuhr*s thought is striking and yet the poem cannot be called derivative. It comes from the later volume Nones and adequately represents the stage of Auden*8 development when theological attitudes are no longer intellectually satisfying and exterior, but have beoome part of the poet*s own experience and are capable of being transmitted- into images that call forth the imaginative response of the reader. But it wa some yeare before Audon reached this stage, and between New Year Letter and Noneo•lie For the Time Beih^ and The Age of Anxiety in which the successes and failures of Auden*s struggle to realise Christian doctrine in poetry can clearly be seen. Poetry is neither theology nor philosophy, however much of both it may contain, and A Christmas Oratorio fails in many places because it has the appearance of being compressed doctrinet second-hand versions of the intellectual disciplines. Auden*s theological views 283. are orthodox and his knowledge extensive but the poem is a verification of 'received ideas'! the Christian vision of redemption, for the most part, remains exterior to the poet's sensibility. In, for example, the Boys Semi-Chorus from the section called The Temptation of St. Joseph, he presents in a deft ten-line stanza a classic summary of the doctrine of Original Sin which has its origin in the teaching of the Western theologians, Tertullian and St. Augustine^. Joseph, Mary, pray for us, Independent embryos who. Unconscious in another, do Evil as each creatiire does In every definite decision To improves for eyen in The germ-cell's primary division Innocence is lost and sin. Already given as a fact. Once more issues as an act^. There can be no doubt that Auden is reproducing the expositions of the early Fathers correctly, but the poetry is slack and cold, lacking any quality that could convince the reader of the reality or importance of the poet's apprehension of man's sinfulness. (1) Cf. iT.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 175 and 363. (2) For the Time Being, p. 82. 28h. Similarly, in the Recitative from Advent which, in its convalutions seems to owe much to the style and thought of Eliot in the first and second sections of Burnt Norton. Auden has done little more, as Beach remarks, than produce a number of *strained paradoxes of theological metaphysics*^. The images of the garden and the desert are drawn, of course, not merely from Bliot*s work, but from the Biblical narratives of the Fall and the Temptations of Christ. The road to salvation is seen to be the Way of the Cross. And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse Until you have consented to die2. All these concepts,are acceptable as intellectual propositions, but they are unconvincing as poetry. It is significant that two of the most successful parts of the Oratorio are the two In which Auden substitutes prose for poetry. In the apeechos of Simeon and Ilerod Auden*s delight in the intellectual paradoxes and complexities of Christian theology is communicated with wit and subtlety. The attempt at direct emotional and Imaginative impact is set aside for a more oblique approach, and prose rhythms inhibit Auden less than those of poetry. (1) The Making of the Auden Canon, p. 208. (2) For the Time Being, p. 66. 285. In many ways, A Christmas Oratorio represents no substantial doctrinal advance on New Year Letter. The reliance upon Kierkegaard is still much in evidence, though placed now in a specifically Christian context. Auden is more obvious in his use of the Danish philosopher however, and many of Kierkegaard's favourite x«ords appear, and frequently with capital letters to single them out^. I^e Important theme of the relation between freedota and necessity; spirit and nature which appeared in tho early poem is hardly developed at all, though tho presence of St. Paul is more discernible than that of Nidbuhr as Audeh introduoes it. Hiebuhr's thought is essentdially Pauline of course, for behind his adumbration of the conflict in man lies St. Paul's exposition of the doctrine of man in his Epistle to the Romans. Knowing the good, man finds himself unable to attain to it, and with a despairing cry the apostle rejects the dictum of Socrates and Plato that sin is ignorance. The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do . This for Auden is 'Plato's lie of intellect.' Deliverance from this unbearable condition 'this body of death' is (1) For the Time Being, pp. 65, 66, 67, 109» 110. (2) The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. Ch. VII, V.I9. 286. offered, for St. Paul, by the figure of the Second Adam, Jesus Christ.. In New Year Letter, despite its distinc• tively religious ending, no solution is offered directly. Forgiveness and love make their appearance, but they are introduced quietly and unostentatiously as consolators rather than as saviours. Three years later they became incarnate in the figure of the Saviour in A Christmas Oratorio which had as its epigraph a-quotation from the Bpistle to the Romans Tniat shall I say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. Immediately preceding these words in their original context is a passage in which St. Paul verges on the suggestion that sin is to be welcomed in order that the power and love of God may be demonstrated more fully. The apostle, however, pulls himself up before he reaches this point, though not before leaving his readers with the conviction that it is only because of man*8 sins and divisions, that God's triumph of grace is so glorious. Many theologieuis since the first century have re-iterated the concept, Kierkegaard more firmly than most, and Auden has taken it up in his own way. In the closing speech of the Narrator, Auden echoes the cry of St. ^ Paul 287. So, once t^e have met the Son, Ve are tempted ever after to pray to the Fathers *Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake.*^ The whole of A Christmas Oratorio cannot be dismissed as a failure. Parts of Advent. The Annunciation and The Flight into Egypt, thou^ not as controlled and convincing as much of AudezEWork, do convey an apprehension of the Christian Gospel that is genuinely felt. In his review of Niebuhr *s The Nature and Destiny of Man in 19'»1, Auden said a propos of the Incarnation that *at an 2 impasse in history Christ arrived.* This Impasse is chillingly suggested in Advent The prophet's lantern is out And gone the boundary stone, Cold the heart and cold the stone, Ice condenses on the bones winter completes an age^. It is not merely the impasse in history that he communicates, but the impasse in the individual human lifet the inescapable moments of fear, uncertainty, and failure where men realise with despair the limitations of their own existence. Later, in the confrontation between the angel. Gabriel and the Virgin Mary the poetry flares into some (1) For the Time Being, p. 12k, (2) New Republic. ciVj p. 765. (3) For the Time Being, p. 62. 288. kind of intensity as Auden demonstrates an aspect of tho doctrine of the Incarnation which Eliot frequently fails to emphasise - the Joyful realisation that the whole world is re-created by the birth of God in history. He links Mary's response and the consequent birth of her son with the Eden myth; the temptation of Eve and the Fall of Man. In her acceptance of the Holy Spirit Mary re-establishes the link between Heaven and earth; becoming the figure of the Second Eve in a way that is characteristic of the ancient typology of the Catholic church. What her negation wounded, may Your affirmation heal today; Love*s will requires your own, that in The flesh whose love you do not know. Love's knowledge into flesh may grow . Unfortunately Gabriel's moasage in the closing stanza Collapses into a string of paradoxical platitudes, and the metaphysical conceit of Mary's second reply is strained, robbing the stanza of the ecstasy of her first reply. Auden'8 vision may bo cruder than Eliot's, but he brings into his expression of it a note of Joy which the authentic apprehension of the miracle of the Incarnation (l) For the Time Being, p. 7^. 289. demands. Aud in his insistence upon *the flesh*, both here in The Annunciation and later* he conveys the real meaning of the union of Qod aud Man so strongly emphasised in the Nev Testament in the vritings of St. John. This does mark an 'advance' on earlier poetry though the Joyfulnees of For the Time lieing is hinted at in the strange dream-like sequence at the end of New Year Letter. The Johannine note is sounded again in the final stanza of the Oratorio as Auden rings the changes on the.vor6a of Christ recorded in the Fourth Gospelt *Z am the Way, and the truthj and the life*^. The familiar thorae of the l^anderer returns* but this time linked once and for all «rith that of the pilgrimage and the symbol of the. city vhere all hopes are fulfilled. Eliot t^as, in many respects, the advocate of the Via Wegativag Auden turns naturally the 'other' way to Oodi the Via Affirmative. Love Uim in the Uorld of the Flesh} And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy^. Possibly in this he tiras again influenced by Charles Williams' vhoae essay on the 'Way of the Affirmation of Images' had been published in Hay 1939^. It is difficult (l) The Gospel according to St. John. Ch. Xht v.6. (a) For the Time Being, p. 12h, (3) The Image of the City. And other essays, pp. 68-75' 290. to toll and Impossible to be dogmaticf but tbo Image of the *dancG* reours frequently In Ifllllams' work, and the effect for ^fhlch Auden is striving is precisely that Tirhioh Uilliaias vaa altjays trying to create i the sense of the value of the material order, and the transfiguration of the «orld by the grace of God in the Incarnation. The task of the religious poet is a difficult one in that it involves the demonstration of the vay in •which metaphysical belief takes effect in human life Doctrine must not only be concretised in sensual images, but shown to have esistential reality. Auden in For the Time Being tries to overcome this difficulty by using the device of the Narrator - a twentieth century figure commenting on the pageant of the Nativity and applying its meaning to the life of the modem urban Christian. Of the five speeches given to this character, the last Is clearly the most significant, but, in some ways, also the most unsatisfactory. Its tone is, at times, smug and its attitudes embarrassingly self-conscious. Remembering the stable where for once in our lives Everything became a You and nothing was an Zt. And the deliberate raatter-of-faotness of the opening deteriorates after four lines into flatness and bathps. Xt is this speech which demonstrates the way in which Auden*s attitude to the Incarnation differs from. 291. and is similar to Eliot's. Once again it must bo emphasised that Bliot is more subtle and moving than Auden but that he lacks a completeness of vision which his younger contemporary espressos in his wider fashion. Inevitably the Incarnation provokes meditation on the meaning of Time, and, almost inevitably, both men use the phrase from the Spistle to the Ephe&lans * redeem the time*!. The redemption of time is central to Four Quartets and For the Time Being. Bliot refers to the apprehension of the Incarnation as ^ the moment In and out of time *, Auden refers to it as *the actual Vision*. Both stress the fact that this moment of illumination is not a permanent condition, but that it gives meeming to the permanent condition. Ordinary, hum-drum human life has to continue in the long stretches between the moments. and the rest ^ Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action • But, for the timo being, here we all are, .Back in the moderate Christotelean city Of darning and the Sig^t-Fifteen, where Buolid*8 geometry And Newton*s meehcmics would account for our g ezperienoe. But for Auden the redemption of time is incomplete without (1) Four Quartets, p. 33. (2) For the Time Being, p. 123. 292. the doctrine of the Atonement so that he puts into the mouth of the Narrator a strange but oharactoristic line . 0 Novft recollecting the moment We can repress the Joy, but the guilt remains conscious . Such an emphasis on guilt t^ould be foreign to the thought of Eliot vho tends to separate the Incarnation and the Atonement. In Auden's vision they are t^elded firmly together, '^e redemption of the Time Being 'from Insignificance' can bo accomplished not merely by expdrioncing the escitement of the Nativity but by living 'the night of agony' vhioh is the Passion and the Crucifixion. This belief is marked out moro delicately and more convincingly in the cycle of poems on the Crucifixion Horae Canonicao. (l) For the Time Being. pp>. 123»12^. 293. CHAPTER XI Auden's Poetry (3)> From The Age of Anxiety to About the House In his Inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry delivered before the University of Oxford in June 1956, Auden said A poem is a ritet hence its formal and ritualistic character. Its use of language is deliberately su3 ostentatiously different from talk-*^. However, muoh >e may agree t^ith him, we are constantly aware of this point of view being demonstrated in an extreme form in his Baroque Ecloque The Age of Anxiety. It was published in 19^8 and dedicated with sly good- humour to John Betjeman, and, as the title indicates is not only a non-dramatic but a deliberately elaborate poetic dialogue whiohf in places, is extremely difficult to readb Technically, it is a remarkable achievement, for, with the exception of a few songs and some explanatory remarks in prose, it is written throu^out in imitation of allit^ative Anglo-Saxon verse with lines ^/^ (l) The Dyer's Hand, p. 58 from the lecture 'Making, Knowing and Judging' pp. 31-60. of varying syllabic quantities but more or less equal stress; The adoption of- a prescribed form, even one as Oomparatively flexible as the' hon-rhyming stressed line, for a long work,' has many attendant dangers; ones which Auden does not always successfully avoid* Some of the faults^ of Wew fear Letter are repeated and accentuated in The A^e of Anzietyi the tendency to verbosity and flashy virtuosityt the use of esoteric and archaic expressions for the sake of Obscurity or because they happen, conveniently, to fit in with the alliteration and rhythmi and the tendency to allow immediacy and spontaneity.to be drained away by the rigid adherence to the rules of the prescribed fera. Auden announces that it is a 'baroque ecloque* and the reader is prepared to accept the intentional artificiality and extravagances which the words imply. Nevertheless it is difficult to excuse the wordy flaecidity of many parts of the poem e.g. the speech of Rosetta beginning *I refuse to accept/Tour plain place...*, and the stilted quality of passages like the following which becomes laughable with the alliteration of the last line But Emble objectedt Muster no monsters, 1*11 meeOcen my own. 295. So did Rosettat You may wish till you waste, I'll want here. So did Quant Too blank the blink of these blind heavens^. And the ironic pretentiousness of the advice given to Bmble by Malin, towards the end of the poem, hardly 1 • Justifies the wild and private symbolism of lines like 0 stiffly stand, a staid monadnockg On her peneplain ....d*.«•....•«•• While admitting the truth of these objections, it is necessary to admit as well, that the poem does contain some fine passages - frequently (though not invariably) in places where the influence of those theologians already mentioned, especially Kierkegaard, seeias most obvious. Auden has referred to 'anxiety^ in a number of earlier poems so the theme is not new to him, and in the last stanaa of Christmas Oratorio there appears the line Seek Him in.the Kingdom of Anxiety^. But unlike For the Time Being. The Age of Anxiety approaches Christian doctrine from an oblique angle. It is a poem which only implies a belief in salvation, for its purpose (1) The Age of Anxiety, p. 2^, (2) Ibid., p. 108. (3) For the Time Being, p. 12^. 296. is to examine the lives of four inhabitants of that Singdom in which Christ, if sought, can be found. *Asixiety* her® means far more than psychological or emotional disturbance. Doubtless it does imply these as well, for in the ooureo of the poem the *eharaoters* display neuroses and fixations which amount almost to pathological conditions. But just as Auden went beyond psychological theory to roligloua belief in an attempt to discover meaning behind the pussling phenomena of human life, so the word * anxiety* is extended to include not only a peyohologioal but a religious or spiritual condition. A good deal of this meaning is drawn from Kierkegaard*s concept of *angst* » a word almost inaposslble to render accurately in English but which is roughly translated as dreed or anguish - a passionate condition which, paradoxically,' precedes both sin and faitho It is intolerable and yet inescapable for it is the oonsequenoe of original elm the agonising recogni• tion by the individual of the loneliness of his separation from Ood and the constant tension in his lifo between freedom and neoossity. Zt is the pre-condition of sin in that it entices the human being to that state of ultimate despair in which all hope or faith in the mercy of Ood is abandoned, but it is also the pre-condition of faith in that the entering of the world of dread can 297. mean, for the individual, a recognition of the true reality9 his guilt before God, and the hopelessness of his situation "ivithout the grape offered in Jesus Christ. Although the experience of 'angst' la unavoidable, Kierkegaard, curidusiy, speaks of 'choosing the despairs for despair itself la a choice'^ So for him, as later for I71ebuhr, the freedom of the human being can be exercised only in the recognition and willing acceptance of the uecossity already laid upon him. Niebuhr makes the connection betweien 'freedom^ and 'anxiety* more explicit when he writes Anxiety Is the internal pre-condition of sin. It is the inovitable spiritual state of man, standing in the paradoxical aituation of freedom and finitenoss. Man is most free in the discovory that he is not froe2. Those ideas have all been touched upon in l?®w Year Letter, and the debt to the theologians already acknowledged. But the debt must not be exaggerated, and it be untrue to say that either Kierkegaard or Niebuhr were directly responsible for bringing 'ansioty' to (1) Quoted by Lowrie in,his biography of Kier!«egaard, P« 90o (2) The Waturo and Destiny of Man, pp. 19i»-193, p. 276. Auden*s notice. As a theme, as I have already suggested, It occurs frequently in much earlier poetry. The Age of Anxiety is the final* and most significant, variation on that theme. The anxiety pictured in Poems 1930. for example^, though aggravated by the disintegrating contemporary society, has its roots not in an external set of circumstances but in the personal, and often sub-conscious, lifo of each individual. The disturbed condition of the world of politics and international relations, class prejudice and civil strife is used as a mir;^or of individual disorders and fears. The technique is not entirely abandoned in The Aa^e of Anxiety either, for Its setting is war-time New York. Quant, Malin, Rosetta, and Emble, drifting and lost, have been brought together by the war, but clearly it is not merely the atmosphere of bewilderment and hopelessness brought about by war-time conditions that has oooaeionsd their meeting at the bar-counter. The reference to the outside world is a symbolic gesture. The ironic suggestion of the opening paragraph is that it always 'looks good to the bar business* whatever the state of the nations, and that it is not merely war which causes 'necessity* to be 'assooiated with horror and boredom with freedom.' These (l) Poems VI, XI, XXIX. Poems 1930 pp. 48-^9, 56, 87-88, 299. four are the representative 'lonelies' and 'failures' who desperately grasp at what they imagine the barman has to offers spokesmen for humanity each with a different experience of the meaning of anxiety{ each at the point of choosing despair and of finding a way through the kingdom of anxiety. At first isolated from each other and preoccupied with their own thoughts, each character endeavours to escape despair by retreating from it. Rosetta's is the most obvious attempt for her thoughts linger on the peace and security of childhood. Far donn each dale industrious there ran A paternoster of ponds and mills. Came sweet waters ^ But this way'of retreat is not only impossible, it is a dangerous Illusion, for she fabricates dreams of a childhood she never had. In a subtle way, this is a variation on the Bden symbol. The dream of innocence may constantly present itself, but return to it is an impossibility . The effects of Original Sin are irrevocable} the only way of Salvation is through the experience of those effects.- the wandering in the world of anxiety and guilt. (1) The Age of Anxiety, p. I5. (2) Cf. For the Time Being, p. 123. For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be Grev; up when it opened 300. At the end of the first part ^alin is given a speech in which he attempts to reaidi the cause of anxiety in men. It is more profound, philosophically, than most of Auden*s verse, but fails to communicate as poetry. The beginning of the speech contains a faint reminder of Charles Williams* statement in The Descent of the Dove Christianity is, always, the redemption of a point, of one particular point. "Now is the accepted tiraei now is the day of salvation.** In this sense there is nothing but now J there is no duration-^. Auden raises again that problem which so concerns himt the redemption df.:tjme, not, as in Eliot*8 work, the metaphysical problem of Time itself, but the existential problem of the nature of human life lived in a time- sequence. Let us then Consider rather the incessant Now of The traveller tlirough time 6....^ The anxiety of the individual, in part at least, is caused by his knowledge of finitude and death. 'Knowledge' and 'experience' constitute a 'doubleness' in human nature which is stressed throughout the speech. The 'Now' in which man knows himself most fully is every moment in which he knows himself to be dying. Consequently (1) Williams, p. 14. (2) The Age of Anxiety, p. 27. 301. he is seen as two creaturest the one who is living and dying, azu3 the one who obsexnres himself inextricably bound up in that very process. As the speiach closes the 'doubleneas^ is investigated moro deeply All that exists Matters to man; he minds Tfhat happens And feels he is at fault, a fallen soul With power to place, to explain every What in his world but why he is neither God nor good The Christian doctrine of the Fall is explicit here. Man is caught between two worlds, or two modes of being, in 'the paradoxical situation of freedom and finiteness', a situation in which he is capable of knowing and aspiring to the good, but incapable of achieving it. The ultimate solution being beyond his grasp ho is left in the state of 'comprehensive dread' which leads either to the ultimate sin of despair in which the grace of God is refused, or final redemption through faith. The specifically Christian note is struck again in the closing lines with their references to the division 2 between knowledge and power , the shattered image of God in which man was created, and the purpose which God had originally ordained for him. What follows in the rest of the poem is the description of the way in which these (1) The Age of Anxiety, pp. 27-28. (2) Cf. St. Paul. The Epistle to the Romans, Ch. VII, 302. wanderers in the Kingdom attempt to discover the means by which the image can be restored. They first delineate the eonditiohs of human life by examining the Seven Ages of Man and pass on in the third part to an actual quest for salvation. The most significant, as well as the most successful section, poetioally, of the second part is that in which they speak of the Fourth Age. Here the metaphysical observations of Rosetta Too soon we embrace that Impermanent appetitive flux, tivmoroua and hard, which adults fear Is real and right, the irreverent place. The cloxm's cosmos^. is demonstrated imaginatively by each of the others. This Fourth Age stands at the centre of human life and it proves to be unstable and frightening. At a time when the possession of security has become important, when the outlines of life should be hardening, pattern and order are seen to dissolve completely. The flux follows an arbitreury course. Abysses open, and despite the amused and melodramatic tones of the poet, the sinister nature of the unexpected and uncontrollable occurrence Is convoyed (1) The Age of Anxiety, p. kl. 303. • lightning at noonday Swiftly stooping to the summer-house EngVEivee its disgust on engrossed flesh. And at tea-times through tall franch windows fiurtle anonymous hostile stones^. This, ialthougfa a long way removed from the melancholic tones of the Danish philosopher, is still the world of Kierkegaard for he emphasised in his personal life as well as his writings the absurdity of human existence. The 'clown's cosmos' was the real world. Man's life of tension was described in tex'ms of the comic situation, but like the traditional figure of the French clown the comedy is'at times bitter and heart-rending. The only means of redemption is the acceptance of the 'absurd' religion of Christianity; absurd because it requires the utterly illogical leap of faith. Both Spears and Uoggart stress the Importemce of faith, or rather its conspicuous absence, in the lives of the four characters in The Age of Anxiety. Spears maintains that each one falls to discover the solution to their dilemma because each desires a way which will 2 not make the supreme demand of faith . Hoggart, in sirailiar fashion, interprets the obscure third part of the eclogue as a series of quests doomed to failure because, while each pilgrim possesses a variety of giftss (l) The Age of Anxiety, p. h2, (2} The Disenchanted Island, p. 232. Auden. An Introductory Essay, pp. 19^-211. 3CA. intelligence, liveliness, imagination, intuition, the essential gift is lacking. In their confused situation none of these gifts can 'bring about the possibility of order - only Faith'^. I do not find the faith-motif as explicitly-expressed as Hoggart and Spears do, but it Is undoubtedly present; as are many of the formulations of Kierkegaard. Hoggart is surely correct in interpreting the strange Sixth Stage of the Journey - the arrival in the Hermetic Gardens - as a symbolic equivalent of the entry into Kierkegaard's Field of Beings which Auden has 2 already referred to in New Year Letter . There is also a parallel with Eliot's garden in the first movement of Burnt Norton, for these gardens offer, momentarily only, a glimpse of reality''. The Kierkegaardian insistence that life is a process of Becoming and not Being entails that they cannot be Qhosen- as permanent dwelling-places, for all choice is suspended here, while men necessarily need to make decisions in the process of Becoming. If dweltt in, the gardens petrify into unreality and (1) Hoggart, p. 211. (2) pp. 47-48. (3) 'Yet this a theatre where thought becomes act* The Age of Anxiety, p. 82. 305. uieanlnglGsaness I their charm becomes *an aoousation*^. This is tfhat happens to the four characters in The Age of Anxiety, but before the unreality descends upon theni, Quant and flaXin speak in a jsay which suggests that they have glimpsed the meaning of the illogical choice to accept necessity and to take the absurd leap of faith. /QXIAKO^ The ruined rebel is recreated And chooses a chosen self. His hardened heart Oonsents to suffer, and the sudden instant Touches his time at last. HALIN says Tonae on the parterre* he takes the hero's Leap into lovo; 2 Their courage g hovevor, deserts them at the crucial moment of ohoioog andg making ezcuses* each character steps avay, back into hie or her old esistenoe, T:;hioh, though confused and meaningless« does not compel them to the terrifying decision. Significantly, for they have returned to their original condition of solitary x«anderers in the SlngdOm of Ansiety, they do not meet each other again tmtil the Journey la oyer. The ironical fourth part of the eclogue is a re-inforcoment of the belief that anxiety cannot be cured by anything other than the religious decision offered at (1) The Age of Anxiety. p. 83. (2) Xbid., p. 82. 306. the Sixth stage of the Journey. Quant and Stable remain unchanged, but Rosetta and Halln are {fiven speeches ttfhich portray a fumbling to%rarde a recognition of the truth about theciselves and a groping towards an offered salvatlonD In a recollection of the religious traditions and sufferings of her race Kosetta echoes the one hundred and thirty ninth psalia^ and faces the reality of her childhood in Laburnuta Crescent. . Her ancestor^ faith, no less than the Christian, is absurd vith its emphatic insistence upon trust in Ood.Malln picks up the note of the ubiquity of God*s knowledge and presence as he closes the poem In our anguish ve struggle To elude Binip to lie to Him, yet His love observes His appalling promise; His predilection As \39 xsrandor and veop is with us to the end,^ In his autobiography Stephen Spender speaks of the peculiar nature of Auden*s re-conversion to Christianity As an Anglican, Auden had difficulties to overcome in accepting the moral and ethical Judgements of the Church. He tjas, as X have already noted, peculiarly free from a sense of guilt or of sin. And now when he used these terms they had a curiously theoretical air* With my Puritan upbringing convincing me of a (1) v.6o Either shall I go then from thy Spirits Hhither shall Z go then from thy presence? v.7> If Z climb up into heaven thou art there8 if X go down to Hell, thou art there also. (2) The Age of Ansietv. pp. 123»126. 307. guilt from T7hloh 1 had spent years struggling to be freep it tjao curious to hear Audon discussing sin as an intellectual position of vhich one could be convinced by the reasoning of •Mother Church*^. This statement seems decidedly at odds ttrith Richard Hoggart*s estimation of the poet £uid whose proposition *a moralistt concerned x^ith the problem of human guilt* colours nearly all his critical evaluations. Zt Is true that Spender is speaking of the man and his personal apprehensions vhile the critics are concerned only t^ith the tfork that has been produced, nevertheless, the man and his «rork cannot be sundered completely and there is an element of truth in Spender's vords about the man that enables the critic to see more clearly certain aspects of the poetry, ppvld ,^ithin Tforld v&s published in 1931» a year before the appearance of Nones t consequently, though Spender could have been acquainted -with some of the poems of the nei7 voliame^., the works of Auden, if any, T^hioh he must have had in mind must have been New Year Letter. For the Time Being, and The Age of i^nxiety. Zt cannot be denied that in all three of these volumes there are passages, often long and important passages, in which the apprehension of *sin*, however (1) World within Tforld. p. 299. (2) Auden. An Introductory Essay, p. Jk. (3) All but three of the poems had appeared in periodicals before the publication of Spender's autobiography. Cf. Bloomfield, W.H. Auden. A Bibliography, pp. 57-58. 308. corraot according to the teachings of the Church, Is decidedly *theoretloal*. The imagery and rhythm fail to create patterns in which the personal conviction of sin is adequately conveyed. But Spender oversirapliflos the case in failing to draw the distinction between sin and guilt. !ka long as ho is talking about *sin*, and as long as we are restricting our frame of reference to tills particular group of volumes, Spender's words have <30ine validity as a criticism of the pootry as well as the man. But *sin* and its complex consequence * guilt* are different things howo^'er closely thoy may be related, and Avidon's ability to convoy, poetically, the conviction of'guilt is Indisputable. The universality of nan*s experience of the consequence of Original Sin has alt^ays been the Churches teaching, and the early volumes of Auden*s poetry are primarily devoted to investigating this peculiar and, from the non-Christian point of view inexplicable condition. The three volumes of his *tiiiddle period* constitute the attempt to reach the explanation. The Ape of Anxiety can be seen as marking the culmination of that particular development. From this point on it is prinarily the nature of salvation that occupies the centre of Auden*s attention. Strangely enough it is only when this happens; when hci discovers the means by which the consequence lo ovorcome and the 309. guilt' destroyed i.e. in the Atonement, that the cause, which is sin itselfo becomed imaginatively and personally real In the. poetry. Zn a minor way this can be seen in the little satirical poem Love Feast from HonesThe contrast between the Agape of the early Christians and the squalid twentieth century partyo between real love and debased love, is obvious but not Jarringly so. The poet prescribes clear and limited outlines and is almost entirely successful within these boundaries. The quotations (of salvation) from St. Augustine and Oante fall into their.ironical positions easily. Spears places a question-mark against the tone of the poem, 'is he ^he protagonist/^ overly complacent about being a sinnerP , but he seems to have missed some of Auden's subtlety. Zt is not merely the secular Love Feast which is being satirised but, precisely, the complacency of the protagonist. Zt is not his easy submission to the desire for 'lliss Number' that is being condemned, but the smug assurance of the mercy df~(8od. Zn an unobtrusive way Auden demonstrates a real knowledge of the meaning of sin. The depravity of the guests at the party is less horrifying than the blasphemy of the sinner's prayer. (1) p. 10. (2} The Disenchanted Island, p. 19^. 310. In hor contribution to the Writfers and Critics series, Barbara Sverett in 1964 remarked The. domincmt impression left by the last ten years of Auden's work, ie that of a willed, or accepted, stabilisation it is possible that, for instance, Nones, The Shield of Achilles o and Homafge to Olio are the only three successive volumes in Auden*s career which, if bound together, would offer something like a coherent poetical character, the different poems arousing no bewilderment by a diversity of tone and subject^. This coherence, she claims, arises from the fact that Auden has found a role and a voice which satisfied him. A consistent persona emerges from these three volumes, and her evaluation of his later pootry is based upon this concept of tho poet*e *willed stabilisation*. Her criticism, for the most part, holds good. It is possible to say of these last volumes what is possible to say of all Sliot*s versep that there is an *essential unity* about them. The achievement of this new stability means that tho poetry no longer displays the slightly hysterical outbursts of indignation or the artificial attitudes of the self-conscious social critics the occasional brilliant analytical shafts or the cutting satirical glance. But even in so sympathetic a critic, there is the suggestion that the gain of stability has (1) ^fH., Auden, p. 93< 311. meant the losS' of something more important (she devotes less than twenty pages - a sixth of tho book - to these volumes); that by tho creation of a new landscape 'deliberately. sot at a distance from the actual*^, Audon has become increasingly detached, increasingly the technician concerned primarily with the *formal coherence* of his work* Z do not believe that this is true* It is true that in all his lobtures and essays on the writing of pootry Auden has become more emphatic about the importance of the writers* 'craft*, and that his own teehnioai vortuosity ie much in evidence, but, though slightly self •"Conscious» the style is never cheap or showy, and the emphasis upon craftsmanship need in no way necessarily impair imaginative power. There is an absence of the heroic pose, of the * grand style* in' the adoption of the *sotto voce* , but in their quiet, meditative, and sophisticated way these poems have warmth and feeling, and Auden conveys a greater sympathy with, and knowledge of, the pains and Joys and foibles of individual human lives than he has ever shown before. (1) g»H. Auden. p. 107. (2) No civil style survived The pandemonium But the wits;', the 80tto<^ooe, Ironic and monochrome0 *To Reinhold ^ Ursula Niebuhr* Nones. 312. Barbara Bverott speaks of the 'diversity of subject' displayed in the last volumes• Superficially this is an aeoarate statements Auden composes nursery rhyaoa and fairy tales, love sozigs and travel songs, poems about music and poems about managers, domestic verses and satires, but the underlying doctrinal themes: his belief about the nature of man, his relation to God, to society, and to the whole of creation, remain the same. Thero is, as it were, a systematic theology underpinning the superficially unconnected structures, and it is this theology which has helped to create the 'role and voice', the eonsietont persona. The new 'stabilisation' is closely rolated to tho doctrinal preoccupations of the poet, for the themes which we have boon considering in the earlier yoluraes are present in these too, but have undergone a transfiguration. They are the same because they are recognisable, but different because they are placed in new relations with each other and in a new context. The problems of human existence are now placed concretely and definitely in tho context of a sure knowledge of Christian salvation. The clearest example in Wonoa of this perpetuation, but transfiguration, of thematic material is offered by the long and elaborate poem Memorial for; a City. Here the familiar compulsions of necessity and freedom, and 313. man*s paradoxical predicament as a creature of nature and spirit receive their customary emphasis The eaptivos are led away, while far in the distance A tanker sinks into a dedolent sea. That is tho way things happen; for over and ever, Plam»bloesoia falls on the dead, Uen are inextrloably caught up in the processes of nature. A man, no more than an animal, can prevent himself from being born or from dying. This is what is seen through the oy© of the. camera or the brow; birth, life, and death are merely occurrences which are recorded - no action has more valiie than any other action. But although caught up in the prooess a man can never be explicable in terms of the prooess. The camera's eye lies to men because they are affected and changed by The osriea of the whipped and the sighs of lovers filen have the ability to stand outside their own lives in Nature, to ask quoatlona about their position at the Juncture of vpirit and Nature, ^e.peculiarly confused state of the human condition - its tragedy, its frustration, its courage, its bewilderment - which makes men fall so easily into despair and cling so longingly to hope, is beautifully brought out in these lines ••••«.....••• Even now, in this night Among the ruins of the post-Vergilian City tlhere our past ie a chaos of graves and the barbed-^ire Stretohes ahead , Into our future till it Is last to sight. (1) Hones, p. 3^. 3l'». Our grief is not Greeki as we bury our dead He know without knowing there is a reason for what we bearl. Again Auden emphasises the quality of life lived in the tirae*aequenoe and not the sequence itself. The problem of time is dismissed in a curt sentence. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Nature or being bound up in time - It is simply one of the areas of man's activity. The cyclical view of time occasionally suggested by Sliot in East Coker is dealt with in a similar curt fashion 'Our grief is not Oreel?'. Zt is the Christian hope of the consummation of creation that Audon is suggesting here, Znevltably, the image of the city dominates the poem and is used to mean a variety of things. As in New Year Let_tj9y. it is probable that the poet owes something to Charles tfiUlams for his conception of the cityt that city which is the apocalyptic symbol of the Kingdom of God, the state of being in which the conflict between necessity and freedom, the dichotomy between knowledge and power« and the tension between Becoming and Being are no longer experienced. The quotation from the writings of Dame Julian of Norwich can be fotmd in The 2 Descent , of the Dove . But Auden does not merely repeat (2) Williams, p. 224. 315. Williams' idea in this poem as he did in New, Year Letter. he incorporates the symbol into his own scheme of imagery giving it diraenelons and outlines that are peculiarly his own* The city of which he speaks is both historical and personal o Zt represents the societies which men have tried to set up in historyi 'the New City', 'the Sano City', 'the Glittering City', 'the Rational City', and also the various ways in which men have tried to resolve the problems of their own nature. Zn history the cities orumble* the civilisations fail, and tho twentieth century is loft with a city which is no city. The desolation of occupied territory and the bleak horror of partitioning ia conveyed in Between the burnt-out Law Courts and Police Headquarters, Past the Cathedral far too damaged to repair The barbed wire runs throu£^ the abolished City^. Similarlyr it is suggested, the efforts of each individual are doomed to failure because each man is^ and always has been to some degree^ 'an abolished City'. The syubolisft technique of embodying personal emotions and beliefs, even abstract, metaphysical ideks, in concrete (here 'geographical') images is employed in tho third section of the poem* The arbitrary division of invading (l) Wongs. p. 37. 316. armies'(*tht» barbed wire runs which neither argues nor explains*} aeon in geographical cities are experienced in the human consciousness as well. Bach man, entirely bgaiiist his will, finds that he is divided against himself. Across the square Across the plains Abrosa our sleep The barbed wire also runs...*.. The final stanaa of this seetion re-emphasises the conflictt spirit and nature; freedom and necessity, and the image of the other self makes it s appearance. Audon has used the mirror-image before, but never with thla kind of effect. In an early poem like Throup^h the Looking Glasa^ the mirror world is a topsy-turvy, * Alice* kind of world* HTevertheless the notion, both of the connexion between the. two worlds by tho reversal of values is there. In ^e Sea and the Mirror, the image is used as a aymbol of the world created by the artist-static, in some sense illusory, but nonetheless oonneeted with the real world and of peouliar value. Here in Memorial for a Citv. Auden seems to draw upon St. Paul*e M Look Stran/gerl pp^ 25-2?. 317. famous .image of the thirteenth chapter of his first Bpistle, to the Corinthiana^. The mirror image suggests an unchanging reality, an integration of the individual and a resolution of confliots that is not achieved in tbia world. TIXQ section ends with a reminder of the epigraph from X)ame Julian 2 This is Adam waiting for His City . Adam, as representative man stands *in the self-same point that our soul is made sensual*^; at the * Juncture of spirit and nature *, (Niebnhr) and the sensuality of Qan*s life is important. Hie Church has always taught that it is in the spiritual rebellion of Adam that sin Eirlaea, and that la why Auden places tho final section in the mouth of his aensual weakness. For man to wish to escape Nature, ita weakneaaes and limitations, is to wish for damnation. Anxiety and conflict arises at the onion of spirit and nature but it is precisely because the spirit is Joined inseparably with the flesh that self- knowledge can be obtained* The flesh demands the aooepteuioe of a frailty which in turn demands salvation. (1) For no\4 we see through a glaaa darkly; but then face to facet now we know in part; but then ahall I know even as also I am known, (l Cor., Ch. XIII, V.12). ~ (2) Nones, p. 38. (3) Cf. Genesis, Ch. Ill, v.? *... and man became a living soul.* 313. The tone Of tbid concluding section may be a little complacent and the images clever-clever, but towards the end the poetry works up to a surprisingly forceful assertion of the expectation of the City of God achieved by the Resurrection At the place of my passion her photographers are gathered togethers but Z shall rise again to hear her Judged, The whole of this final seotioh can be read as a longer and mprp restrained version of the expectation envisaged in the blpsinjg lines of a Christmas Oratorio where all the Oooasions of the Flesh shall dance for Joy. The technique of embodying interior, personal emotions and attitudes in the descriptions of particular geographical areas is used more obviously in the poem from the same volnme In Praise of Limestone and in the cycle of poems Bucolics which constitutes the first part of The Shield of Achillea. The poet's feelings and theories about certain human qualities and activities are concretised in the presentation of landscapes and figures. Zn Praise of Limoatone turns around the point of human weakness and instability, and the limestone landscape is chosen 'Because it dissolves in water...'^ (l) Nones, p« 11. 319. It la a landscape which has neither great heights or great depths, neither spectacular beauty nor aweaome ugliness; it has been civilised,changing aoftly over the years; xrofuslng to allow destructive paaalons or stiflizig austerity in the lives of its inhabitants. The figures ropreaent the comfortable, secure side of human lifo, but also the monotonous pettiness and humdrum squalor of existence So, when one of them goes , to the bad, the way his mind works Rpmains: ' comiprehonsiblo i to become a pimp Or deal in fake Jewellery or rain a fine tenor voice The figures of this landeoape do not destroy or dlatort what ie.beautif^il.and.good, they haven't the power; they either ignore it or degrade it, this la their weakneaa. Tet Aixden sees this weaknesa, aa in the final section of Memorial for d City ae that which saves them from unreality, in Christian terms( from Pride, and in turn from damnation. The Sierkegaardion choice of deapalr has been 'oivilised* here into the C€Llm recognition of frailty. The poem lacks the religious fervour of Memoriial for a City and conveys an intensely personal vision which lays no claim to universal aboeptauce; we cannot read the poem without hearing the inflexions of (l) Nones, p. 12. 320. the poet's own voice. Thero is a curious tension between the ideal and the real Doar^ Z know nothing of Either, but when Z try to imagine a faultless love Or the life to come, what Z hear is the muzmu? Of underground streams, what Z see is a limestone landsoapel. The whole point about the landscape is that it is both faulty and ohanging - aepectis of existence which have no application in the ideal world where love is perfect and life is eternal. Zn these poised, meditative complexities Auden somehOw manages to convey the impossibility of 'imagining' the experience of faultless love or the life to come while convinoihg us of the reality of his belief in it. His belief about the nature of man has changed little since the early lyric 9 'Lay your sleeping head, my love' the aeeeptabce of life as incomplete and bewildering is still present, but it is made easily and quietly in these later poems and placed firmly in the context of redemption. Few Of the poems in BncoliCB are as successful as. Zn Praise of Limestoneb The symbolist techniques often (1) Nones, p. 13* (2) Another Time, pp. «»3-U. 321. seems strained, and there Is frequently an insufficient identification of idea and image. Zn many places Auden's verso has a slick verbosity^, and the tone, though consistently anausing and slightly taoeking, beootnes eiabarrassingly urbane from time to time. Horalne» pat, oxbotf, glint, sink, crater, piedmont) dimple? Just reeling off their names is ever so comfy^. Of th« soven poens in the sequence, Pin ins is the most convincing. Here the poet manages to convey the cruelty and callousness of hurasn beings as yaeXl as their smallness., their nakedness^ and their defencelossness. Plains^ arc those areas in vhich both the cold and tyrannical and those who are forced to bo dominated have their habitation. No account is taken of the frailty Or pleasant muddle or untidiness of human life for *Zeus is with the strong**^. Plains moreover offer no means of escape or possible hldlng-^place, and in a stansa v?hich describes the common nightmare escperience by recalling the surrealism of a Salvador Dali paintisig, Auden conveys the terror of those who are htanted and helpless T«hich is real to all men (l) Of. the first stanaa of ^Indsg the third stanBa of Plains. (a) The Shield of Achilles, p. 2k, (3) Xbid.p p. 38, 322. even though they may experience it only in dreams. Z have tried to run, knowing there tfas no hiding and no help; On theoi in brilliant moonlight, Z have lost my vjay And stood without a shadot? at the dead centre Of an abominable desolation, ^ Like Tarquin ravished by his post-ooital sadness . The transfiguration of thematio material, ^^hich has already been mentioned, becomes apparent in a slightly different contest when that same love lyric from Another Timei *Lay your sleeping head, my love* is compared vith the, somewhat strange, love-song from The, Shield of Achilles i The billow-wren and the Stare . In the earlier poem the value of the moment of love is stressed despite the fact that those who experience it are guilty and mortal, and that the moment itself is a fleeting one. The same belief is expressed in the later poem where the inconstancy of the lovers is brought out by the birds and the extravagant, and sometimes silly, declarations of the young man are contradicted by their wry and worldly commentary. Despite the claims, love can be mean and selfish} lovers treacherous and unfaithful. In both of the poems the complexity of the human experience is conveyed for in (1) The Shield of Achilles, p. 29. (2) Ibid., pp. 4l-'Va. 323. both tho joy of the cioment is accounted as real. But \9hereasj in the early poem Auden loaves the reader v;lth the icipr ess ion that this f looting experience is one snatched from a llfo-timo of emotional poverty and deceit, the later poeia suggests that impermanent and incomplete as the moment is, it illuminates, and makes bearable the life in the context of which it occurs. In the colloquial quip with which the stare concludes the poem, Audea places the whole emotional adventure under tho protection of Cod's moroy from which the Joy of the particular sioment is ultimately derived. The Shield of Achilles ends with a cycle of seven poems entitled Horae Canonieae which, as far as this study is concerned, is the focal point of the poet's work for it contains the clearest and the finest expression of his religious beliefs. Prime and Nones both appeared earlier but have boon included here to form a sequence which, as the title indicates, is built upon the structure of tho monastic offico of the Vestem Church. The modern monastic breviary actually contains eight offices, but Auden uses the original form prescribed by St. Benedict in the fifth century and omits the night office of Matins. Bis choice of this particular structure signifies the preoccupation with the familiar themei the redemption of time - the way in which human life can 32^. bo consecrated to the purposes of God. It is the symbolic function of the Divine Office to sanctify time, and the monks ^ daily round of prayer and praise Acknowledges symbolically that all men live in God*s time, that all life is holy, and that it is the prime duty of all men to adore and glorify their creator The monk and his imitators gave the church the divine office and the conception of the whole life of man as consummated in worship, instead of regarding worship as a department of life, like paganism, or the contradiction of daily lifOf like the pre-Nlcene church-^. Every hour of every day is God*s, and it is to be lived under his care and protection as well as to His glory. Attden builds upon this pattern and uses these associations as starting-points for his own meditations upon the human condition. It is, obviously, not a poem about the Divine Office. Each office is used in much the same way as each landscape.in Bucolics was used, but the coherent structure of the whole office gives these seven poems a unity, despite their diversity of tone, which Bucolics does not possess. Unfortunately the poetic quality throughout the sequence Is-uneven and the string of adverbs with which the first poem, Prime. opens is not an auspicious beginning Simultaneously, as soundlessly Spontaneously, suddenly 2 As, at the vaunt of dawn (1) Gregory Diac. The Shape of the Liturgy, p. 332, (2) The Shield of Achilles, p. 61. 325. Nothing is accomplished by the mere repetition of the sibilantp and despite Allan Rodway's arguments in his recent article on the necessity for Auden*s tortured *loglcloas* style, the convolutions of the language are not Justified by the difficulty of the concepts and attitudes it is meant to convey^. And at the beginning of the second stanza the poet lapses into a smirking banality with the assurance Holy this moment, wholly in the right. But a little later, with the reference to the Fall and the introduction of the familiar Eden theme, the poetry does achieve some imaginative depth. The dream of Innocencet the state of being 'previous to any act* continues to haunt humanity, and in that curious waking moment in which dream and reality merge the desire is experienced almost as a physical sensation. This is a moment before the drawing of breath, when life, as it were, is suspended. But the moment is gone in a flash and the first breath is drawn. Ulth that breath comes self-knowledge, and with that self-knowledge, action, and to act is to die and esperlenoe the loss of Paradise. (l) *Logicles8 Grammar in Audenland*. London Magazine. Harch 1963* PP* 32-38. 326. I draw breath! this is of course to wish No matter what, to be wise. To be different, to die and the cost, No matter how, is Paradise . Lost of course and myself owing a death • Here the link between man's sinfulness and his mortality is made unambiguously explicit. Previously in the poetry* death has been pictured as an inescapable fact of the human condition vaguely connected with the problem of knowledge and guilt, but not necessarily bound to it. Sven A Christmas Oratorio leaves the relation undefined* But now the causal connection between the Fall and man's experience of death, as contained in the doctrine of Original Sin, is emphasised. This opens the way for Auden to consider the meaning of another deaths that of Jesus Christ, and it is the relation between these two deaths - which is, in fact the doctrine of the Atoneaent - that is the point around which the whole sequence revolves. iEn the original Benedictine scheme, the three small offices of Teroe, Sext* and None were intended to oommeraorate three of the hours of the Passion of Christ on the first Good Friday^ and so here, in these three (l) The Shield of Achilles, p. 62. 327. poems Auden shows himself most obviously concerned with the events of the Passion and Crucifixion. The Intention of the artist is quite clear; it is the same as that of A Chrlatmae Oratorio where the 'events* of tho Incarnation were summoned into the present, but the technique is less obvious and the investigation more personal. Auden attempts td^'ldentlfy the actions of contemporary man with those of people living in Jerusalem nearly two thousand years agoi to weave the occurrences of the first Good Friday Into the fabric of every man's experience and so convey the meaning of the reality enshrined in the doctrine df the Atonement. The task is immensely difficult, and one which Auden does not always successfully perform. Bridging the gap of hundreds of years so that the past comes alive in the present is possibly something that can be achieved only in the religious society by means of ritual and liturgical observance. Auden seems to have realised this, and for this reason chose to rely so heavily upon the structure offered by the Divine Office. The failure of Terce has its roots in this difficulty, for it is a failure of tone. Auden has always enjoyed the Juxtaposition of the serious and the trivial i the solemn and the comics even the ancient and the modern, but in this poem the transitions are too sudden and the rr;. Juxtapositions tend to Jar rather than illuminate. It 328. is only with difficulty that the reader places the man praying to his image in the contest of Oood Friday. Teroe is the hour in which the monastie community recalls the figure of the Saviour being led away to the place of Crucifixion. It is the hour, in the world, at which men prepare to begin their daily work. The last stansa catches up the suggestions of the Narrator at the end of A Christnae Oratorio. God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph^. The killing of Christ is a triumph for the world and for all of its inhabitants who demand that they suffer no embarrassBients that the machinery runs smoothly. Auden links each man with the hangman. On this day it is the work of tho world to crucify| the selfishness of man's prayer accomplishes the death. Sext is tho hour in the middle of the day when the nailing to the Cross is oommemorated, and is used by the poet to stress again theifadt of man's divided nature; that it is not only his weaknesses but his strengths, not only his vices but his virtues which cause his separation from Ood and demand the Crucifixion. Single• ness of mind, determination, selflessness, and courage have built civilisations and given men dignity and (1) For the Time Being, p. IZk. 329. stability, and without them men should still be slaves of Dame Slnd» lacking all notion of a oltyl Yet it was the determination and courage of the Jews, not the vaelllating weakness of Pilate which brought Christ to Calvary. Btkt the weakness of men is not forgotten and in the third section of the poem Auden reoalls in his image of the crowd the way in which, that toot contributes to the tragedy. but the crowd rejects no one. Joining the crowd is tho only thing all men can do2. This is the religious expression of the * intolerable neinral itch* of the earlier poetry. The situation in which man finds himself condemned to failure is Intolerable, yet unavoidable. At the end of each section in Sext Auden brings the reader back to the scene on Calvary * this death*, *thl8 dying*. The refrain is a sad one, but not a pessimistic one, it not only reminds man of his condition but seems to offer some kind of meaning behind the bewilderment which he feels in looking at the figure nailed to the wood. That meaning is revealed in the next four poems. (1) The Shield of Achilles, p. 66. (2) Ibid., p. 69. 330. Nones, at the ninth hour of the day, commemorates the actual oomont of death upon the cross, and it is the hour by which Auden chooses to symbolise man's freedom to sin and his ability to destroy as well as to create. This is the hour in which eaoh individual is compe^lled to acknowledge his sin and accept the responsibility for his actions. The all-too-easy transition from desire and intention to action and accomplishment is conveyed in the opening lines tlhat we know to be not possible 'Hkough time after time foretold By wild hermits, by shaman and Sybil .. Gibbering in their tranoes. Or revealed to a child in some chance rhjrme Like will and kill, comes to pass Before we realise ±tt^ The stanea continues to suggest the childish fears, helplessness and revulsion which come over the adult who has done something shameful. But the lines are more powerful than that for the petulance and the hysterical edge hide a real, almost supernatural, terror. ••• we are not prepared For silence so sudden and so soon; The day is too hot, too bright, too still. Too ever, the dead remains too nothing. Vhat shall we do till nightfall? Ultimate evasion of responsibility is impossible. Men can never escape the anxiety of their lives because they can never escape the consequences of their actions. (1) Tl^e Shield of Achilles, p. 70. 331. As was suggested earlier, Auden sees clearly the irrevocability of the Fall whase ultimate consequence is the crucifixion of Christ. wherever The sun shines, brooks run, books are written. There will also be this death^. The image of death here is a deliberately ambiguous one. It symbolises man's flnlttide, his anxiety, his guilt, and the tensions of his life, but, as it echoes the phrases of the previous poem, it signifies the death.of Christ which serves not merely as a reminder to the individual of his sinfulness but as a hope of redemption. In the penultimate otanaa of Wones Auden Introduces the image of the Dappelgflnger. It goes unexplained until the following poem Vespers which is built arotmd the idea of a meeting with the mirror-image, ihis is a oollootlon of witty, epigrammatic antitheses rather than a poem in its own rl^t, but is deft in its construction and clear in the point it has to make. Eden, the dream of the recovery Cf innocence, is finally rejected, though not in favour of the austere and virtuous life of the New Jerusalem. (Auden*s use of the New Jerusalem image is not one gathered from the Revelation of St. John. the Divine.) The Singdom of God is neither of those places. (1) The Shield of Achilles, p. 72. 332. but a city founded upon a death the whole meaning of which oan only be apprehended when each man has met the image from which» in circumstances other than the twilight post-orueifixion world« he automatically turns away. Only in the sacrificial death is the divided nature of man united forcing us both, for a fraction of a second, to z^meraber our victim (but for him X could forget the blood• but for me he could forget the innocence)^. From the point of view of the doctrine of the Atonement, the words contained by the brackets are of some signifi• cance* Attden is making an oblique reference here to a dialectic in tho interpretation of the Atonement which oan be traced back as far as the writings of St. John and St. Paul. Zn the Johannine books the emphasis is placed upon the perfect self-oblation of Christ, the sinless and innocent Lamb, while St. Paul places the sacrificial dedth, reconciliation 'by the blood of his Cross* at the centre of his picture . Both aspects are necessary if a complete vision of the redemptive work of Christ is to be obtained. In the quiet, sympathetic, conversational tones of Compline, the Juxtaposition of grandeur and simplicity. (1) The Shield of Achilles, p. 77. (a) The Epistle to the Coldasions. Ch. I. v. 20. 333. serious and trivial, natural and supernatural is accomplished easily and naturally. Tho recognition of guilt has been accomplished in the previous poems and now, in this hour before sleep, the poet begins to explore the meaning of salvation. The significant image is that of the dance - mentioned at first almost as an aside Leave me, without a status. Among Its unwashed tribes of wishes Who have no dances and no Jokes^ and then stressed heavily at the close of the stanza which is an evening prayer That we, too, may come to the picnic With nothing to bide. Join the dance As it moves in perlchoresis. Turns about the abiding tree. The image of the dance does hot make many appearances in Auden*s poetry, but when It does appear tho reader is • conscious of a significance whloh is often lacking expressions which appear with greater frequency. In the early theatrical device The Dance of Death it performs two Important functions. First it suggests the traditional image of tho Danes Macabre which turns the conventional association of dancing with youth and vitality upside down, and secondly, it conveys the sense of these taking part in the action being caught up into a pattern (1) The Shield of Achilles, p. 79. 33^. which ends in death and from which there can be no escape. Only this image with its double connotation of lively movement and ritualistic order could adequately convey the ironies of the situation Auden was attempting to doseribe. In the later poem The Dead Echo from the volume Letters from Iceland^ the image is used more conventionally as the poet echoes tho note of Bocleeiastes *Bat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die* in the refrain of each stcuiea. Hhe image stands for the wild and desperate, though ultlmatoly useless, assertion of life and vigour before tho final annihilation. The oonneotion between dancing and death is still prominent and in the closing lines Auden recalls the greatest of the Romantic ballets Giselle in which tho Quoon of the Dead eondemns the hero to dance himself to death. Letters from loeland was published in 19371 four years later the image re-appeared at the close of New Year Letter with specifically Christian connotations. In 1. 1656 Auden, quoting from a medioval Easter carol, . reoalls the delicate ambiguity of words which identify the (1) Letters from Iceland, pp. 227-229. (2) Eceleqiaetes, Oh. 71X1, v. 15. 335. lover with the figure of Christ, and the country dances on the village green with the Joyful celebration of the Resurrection^. Forty-three lines later the image occurs again ^e fall down in the dance, we wako The old ridiculous mistake^ and a similar ambiguity is suggested. The dance stands both as a symbol for ordinary life and a symbol for life lived in obedience to the will of God - Ideally one in the religious perspeetlvo. The contrast between Auden*s early and later uses of the image is nowhere more marked than in The Sea and the Mirror where Antonio, refusing the repentance and Joy of the other characters, responds to the song of MiraiuSa in words which echo, the title of the early play Happy Miranda does not know The figure that Antonio, The Only One, Creation's 0 Dances for Death alone3. The oholoe to be self-sufficient, separate from others and from God* can produce only a parody of the Deuice- Death. In Miranda*s song, which in itself has tho form of a dance - a vlilanelle - the vision of innocence and the hope of redemption are preserved by the linking of (1) The Oxford Book of Carols. Carol No. 71. (2) New Year Letter, p. 7^. (3) For the Time Beini^. p. 30. 336. hands in the dance - a ritual activity performed in conjunction with all tho other creatures of the imperfect world, the dance has become the symbol of life lived Joyfully and hopefullyi the final chorus of A Christmas Oratorio emphasises it unambiguously^. As a symbol *the dance* has been used innumerable times in literature and painting, and it is remarkable that while Auden shows hio awareness of its cultural aseooiatione he never allows his own use to become self- oonscious or precious. In Compline. he consummates his own earlier uses while, at the same time, recalls tho image of the dance in the writings of three of his contemporaries< W.B* Teats, T.S. Eliot, and Charles Ifilliams. At the end of his poem Among Schoolchildren Teats employs both the image of the dance and tho tree. Both represent a constantly-moving life formalised into an abstract but profoundly satisfying pattern . Auden*a vision is not tragic like that of Teats, nor is his image as complex, but his similarity to Teats is evident, for in the same kind of way the dance conveys the idea of life moving and changing, though in a discernible and wonderful pattern, but he makes it turn (l) *Love Him in the Uorld of the Flesh; And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for Joy.* (s) Cf • Frank Senaoda. The Romantic Image, pp. 70-79. 337. about soQiothlng fixed and unchanging 'the abiding tree*. A greater degree of complexity enters here* for in the traditional typology of the Catholic Church the tree acta both as a symbol of the l?all of man and also his redemption* The Cross is the eternal tree, that centre of life around ^hich everything else moves^. So the erucifision* the death of Christ in ishich the reconcilia• tion of man is achieved» remains at the core of the poem. There are also echoes here of Pour Quartets i Bliot's fdance along the arterys't the *axlo->tree*» (the still point of the turning tvorld * • and it is in the use of this image that Sliot and Auden Areas closest together. Both see the divine and conflicting forces of man's life being drat^n together into a meaningful pattern around a single point. S'or Eliot this point is the birth of Christs the moment in vhioh the temporal and the eternal meet. But for Auden (in this sequence at least) it is the death of Christ which performs this functions the act in (1) Cf• The daily office Hymn from Passion Sunday to Holy Thursday Faithful crossI above all other One and only noble treeI None in foliage» none in blossom !7one in fruit thy pe&v may bes Stjeetest vood and sveetest ironi Svoetest treig^t is hung on thee. (English Hvmnal. Hymn 96), (2) gour Quartets, pp. 8-9. 338. whleb the reoonoiliation of God and nan is effected. Sot vh&le both poets are united in an affirmation of the validity of the Christian esperienoe» the contest in uhioh this experience becomes real displays with ntmost clarity their differences in religious sensibility. Eliot*8 metaphysical philosophical questionini^s about the relation between appearance and roalityt the tineless and time, limitation aiod imperfection find some kind of solution in a doctrine t?hich lends itself most easily to speculative treatment - the Zncamation. Auden's xjere personal and existential problems of guilt, frustrations and tensions in human life are resolved in a doctrine vhieh addresses itself directly to the condition of human sufferings and conflictsi the Atonement. ITeedless to saya no Christian vision of salvation can be complete unless both doctrines are seen as complementing each other* for there can be no Atonement t^ithout the *Uord made Flesh*• and the Incarnation has no purpose unless death is overcome and union with Gk»d achieved. Both poets have seen this clearly and have tried to express it, but tfhereas Bliot« as X have already tried to shot;, only occasionally manages to convey the vision, Auden in a sequence of poems devoted to the death of Christ, treats the Atonement in such a t^ay that XSQ are atfare constantly of his vivid sense of the Zncamation. And from this 339. completeness of vision there arises a consistent expression of Christian Joy and confidence that Eliot never achieved* At the end of his treatise On the Incarnation the fourth century Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, t^ho vas largely responsible for the formulation of the Nieene Greed, crystallised the dominant attitude of the early church to the Incarnation In the vords t He, /flo^ indeed, assumed humanity that we Biii^t become Ood.^ Although Attden*s poem has as its theme the death, and not the birth, of Christ, this belief in the deification of man is what lies behind the closing lines of Compline. The poet uses the specifically theological word *perichoresi8* i a technical tore for emphasising the essential unity of the Blessed Trinity. Perichoresis is explained by Charles Uilliams as *co-inherence *, the constant weaving in and out of the Throe Persons so that wherever one acts all three apt, for each exists eternally in the others • It' is the dahbe of love between the members of the Trinity and it is into this exchange that man, by reason of the Atonement, is taken up. In Athanasius* words man becomes God. The influence of Yeats and Sliot M The, Incarnation, p. 93. 3'«0. is comparatively easy to discern, the presence of Uilliams is more subtle* and more pervasive. There is the obvious conneetion betiveen Audon's use of the dance image and VilliatDs * dance of the Tarot figures in his novel The Greater Trumps« but more significant is tho xiay in vhich both men link together the saerlfieial death of Christ end the transfiguration of the created order. In tho writings of Uilliams the conviction of tho reality of the *Vord made S'lesh* underlies everything that is said but the doctrine as such never becomes prominent, !t is by the great act of substituted love on Calvary that the flesh of men is tahen into glory. Prom this moment onwards co-inherence is the dominant principle of the Christian life a the co-inherence of Ood and Ood in tho Trinity s of man and man in the Church | and of God and man in the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ^. Xn Lauds^ Audon produces a poem in which this principle of co-inherenCe is embodied. lAttds is the hymn of praise which begins tho cycle of the Daily Office, and it is significant that Auden, in his own schemSf places it at the end of the cycle, emphasising the fact that the goal of man's life is the adoration of his Creator. It is a simple little poem (1) The Descent of the Bove* pp. 33t»-236. 3^1^ cast in the form of a Spanish cossante. and oreates a sense of freshness associated with the best Medieval lyrics* The form itself is important for it is circular and repetitive, ending at the point at which it began, becoming thus a formal image of co-inherence. There is the suggestion of a quiet but deep appreciation of the natural world The dripping mill-wheel is again turnings Among the leaves the small birds sings^ All the pains and disillusionments of man's life have disappeared. His guilt and emsiety are taken away as he finds himself capable of experiencing an unalloyed Joy in the harmony with the rest of creation* In this, almost ostehtatlouoly,.ritualistic poera the sense of the unity and coherence of everything is emphasised. In A Christmas Oratorio the eonsequencos of Original Sin are demonstrated by the separation of man from man and the divisions which man knows within his own being • Here all are united again in Redemption so that it is with no feelings of regret or fear or anger that Men of their neighbours become sensible The rather wistful phrase of New Year Letter Our life and death are with our neighbour^ M yi^e Shield of Achilles, p. 80. (2) P«>r the Time Being, pp* 69-73. (3) p. 75. 3^2. becomes a reality in Lauds^. A man's neighbours are part of the coherent pattern of his life, without them he is incomplete. But for all this Auden has not lost his grasp of the realities for the strange, and constant refrain In eolitudo, for company recalls what ho has always believed about the essential loneliness of the individual, as well as his need to find his ovn place in the complex pattern of human experience • The ringing of the mass-bell re-iterates the familiar theme of the spirit/nature tension in man, for the Gueharist is a constant reminder to man of his citiaenship in two worlds. But there the conflict is resolved for it is at this point in the anamnesis of Christ's Death and Passion, which is the U&QB, that Ood gives Himself in material form again. The Blessed Sacrament represents tho oo-inherenco of God and man, and at this point spirit and nature are wonderfully united. The words of Dame Julian of Norwich are brought to mind Xn the self-same point that our souls are made sensual, in the self-same point is the -City cf God ordained to him from without beginning^. 3^3. A detailed examination of any of the poems contained in Auden* 8 most recent volume Homage to Clio^ and 2 About the House will add nothing to what has already been discovered about the religious ideas in his poetry, for the beliefs which underlie the poems in these publications are those of Horae Canonicae. But although there is no develpimient of idea, it is possible to say that in much the same way as his style and tone have ohanged, so his religious sensibility seem to have altered* He has become more domestic and more secure, in some ways more dulli intent upon conveying personal and private attitudes in the most impersonal kind of way. In a few isolated instances the grand vision which informed the earlier poems can be caught from an oblique angle, but in his deliberate preoccupation with house• hold appliances, local customs, domestic incidents and all the trivia of day-to-day living, he refuses to allow thi^ vision overt expression, ^e reader is aware that the Christian conviction is there, but it is hidden a long way beneath the surface, and since 1953 has preferred to reveal itself in prose rather than poetry. Nearly all of these poems are in their quiet and detached way a celebration of man, not in the sense of (1) Published in 1960. (2) Published in I966. tho nineteenth century liberal progressive who saw him as a hero oonquoring his environment and marching towards perfection, (Auden's notion of heroism lies in another direction altogether) but as a creature who is frail and weak» selfish and guilty, but who nonetheless has managed to civilise and communicate. Tho images of this civilisation are numerous and variodi musical creation, poetry, cooking, and household gadgets. These poems are a hymn of praise, not to the great life of quests and eruoifisions, but to the good life in which the gentler virtues are practised. It is not that Auden has abandoned the tragic and glorious vision of earlier poems, but that he is attempting to translate that vision into the terms of the trivial details of practical existence. Frequently he fails and tho poetry descends to the level of bathos as in the final stanaa of Tonight at Seven- thirty^ where« despite the obvious irony, the picture of spiritual and natural forces (both spelt with capital letters) uniting to concoct a good meal does not eeccape absurdity. But occasionally he succeeds; and in the poem froQ Homage to Clio. On Installing an American git Chen in Leweae^ Austria there is the subtle introduction of the heroic element into the trivial preoccupation. The poem is, again, about cooking and food and the physical (1) About the House, pp. 39-41. 3*5. necessities of life, and it has the epigram Srst komnit das Freeeen, dam komnt die £3oral^. This does not moan that the Moral is of no significance. As in the poem First thing's Pirat^ the poet addresses himself with cocBBon-sense to practicalities j there Can be no heroism where there is starvation. But for all that, when man has fed well, he discovers that Thermapylao is still waiting All we ask for. Should the night come when compts blase and wires break. Is a good dinner, that wo Slay march in high fettle, left foot first. To hold her ThonBOipylae3* The poem ends thus en a note of heroism, not willingly asked for, but recognised as a possible strand in the fabric of human life, and so looks back to the Narrator*8 remarks about temptation and sin in the closing passages of A Christaaa Oratorio* But it looks foxraard too, to the poem which concludes the volume About the House. ^itsupday in girch8t.et.t@|i about Cataatropho or how to behave in one I know. nothing, except what everyone knows - j. if there when Grace dances, I should dance * Here, with the introduction of the imago of the dance, we are given that rare glimpse, from the oblique angle. (1) Homage to Clio* p* 2'»* (2) Ibid*, p. 58. (3) Ibid., p. 26* (4) Ibid*, p. 94* 3^6. of the vision of Ood which gives the peace, the security and the serene tolerance that Characterise the best of these late poems. Despite the frailty and helplessness Of man there is confidence in his belief that in the end 'Grace dances' and that he is part of that dance. Z said earlier that Auden was a derivative writer but the progression of his work from Hew Year Letter to About the Houscj shows that the influence of specific theological authors becomes less and less apparent euid that the themes with which he was pre-oecupiod in earlier work undergo transfiguration. Many of the poems in these later volumes are badly blemished, and only a few capture the imagination, but the reason for their failure is not, as Bayley suggests, that they are verifications of a point of viewt it is caused by faults that are discernible in the very first volume he produced. The desire to bo the 'craftsman' and the technical virtuoso triumphs Over imaginative effort and Sympathetic response. Xn many of the poems which do succeed, the influence of Audeh's theological reading can still be seen, but in the best of them he does not merely repeat or interprets the theolof^ has been made his own, and it is in terms of his own experience that it is transformed into poetry. 3*»7P CHfrPTEaS^EI The ohfirapter of tw«^ntieth qentury theology and the relation of Eliot*s and Anden's work to this pattern of reliaioue sensibilitv At a time when impatience and irritations with the APsthetlo Kovemont was steadily growing among English intellectuals, A*C^ Bradley was elected Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford and' provocatively chose as a title for his inaugural lecture in 19011 Poetry for Poetry*s Sake. Though specifically disclaiming allegiance to the more extreme forms of the dogiaa *art for art's sake*, he nonetheless argued strongly and. convinoingly for, what he called, the *autonomy* of poetry< .For its nature is not to be a part, nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase)^ but to be a world by itself, independent, complete, autonoraouss and to possess it fully you must enter that worlds conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to you in the other world of reality!. (1) Oxfpiyi l^q^uyep pn Poetry, p. 5. 3^8. There is nothing in this statement that the most extravagant aesthetics could quarrel with (except possibly the phrase 'for the time'), and for fear that hiis beliefs might sound too reminiscent of the sentiments of Pater or l?ilde, Bradley hurried on with the assurance that there was plenty of connection between life and poetry, but it is^ so to say, a connection underground^* And with these two points in mind, he passed on to the main purpose of the lecture which was an analysis and demolition Of the currently popular vogue in literary critioism which placed 'substance' and 'form' in poetry, in a falsely antithetical relationship. Consequently, the relationship between life and poetry - the problem hinted at in the title of the lecture - was dealt with obliquely} it has to be inferred from hie perceptive examination of only one of tho 'autonomous' worldsi poetry. Ifhile it would be unfair to criticize Bradley for failing to do something he never intended to do, it is nonetheless disappointing to find, in a lecture whoso title so deliberately echoes the disputes of earlier decades, that the problem of the relationship between (1) Ox£:ord, Lectures on yoetrR p. 6. 3^9. contemporary art and contemporary life received only indirect treatment. Certain eonoluslons can,' of course, be drawn. Bradley was obviously no aesthete in that he believed a real relation to exist between contemporary art and contemporary lifoi but. there is an aesthetio vagueness about his use of tho phrase 'the other world of reality' , and he makes no attempt to suggest that it might be important to *place'works of art historically, and the closing paragraphs of the lecture'^ are strongly reminiscent of some of Shelley's more ecstatic utterances, debased forms of which might be found in the aesthetes' attempts to drive a wedge between Art and Life - especially oontemporary art and contemporary life^ At the other end of the scale from Shelley, the Aesthetes and Bradley, all of whom believed in the *autonomy' of the world of art, stand the Marxist critics of our own day whose attitude to the relationship between art and life is even less ambiguous, and certainly more orudely expressed, than e.g. Pater's, ^ereas Bradley leaves us in some doubt as to the 'content' of his 'other world of reality', Marxist oriticism is disarralngly frank about its conception of the nature of tho world. And whereas Bradley is totally (l) Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp. 26-27.\ 350. uninterested in *placing* a work historically, the Marxist critic treats this as one of his major concerns^. Even Margaret Schlattoh, whose book Modem English & American Poetry is concerned primarily with the matter of modern poetic technique, makes.her pronouncements out of a background of clearly defined and deprossingly restricted beliefs about the nature of human life and human history, in which poetry has its part to play, ^e world for the Marxist critic is a world of olass- oonflict, of social, political and economio straggle, and, inevitably, of numberless programmes in the course of which the individual eventually attains to freedom and self-realisation. The orthodox Marxist critic might even go so far as tp demand that art should not merely depict the struggle of men towards self-realisation, but actually give itself over to the propogation of the Marxist gospel* lb his essay Inside the Ifhale. George Orwell quotes an extreme formulation of this point of view Literary criticism which aims at being Marxist must proclaim that no book w^tton at the present time can pa be "good" unless it is written from a Marxist or a near-Marxist viewpoint2. (1) Cf* John Press* The Fire ani the Fountain, pp. 173-17*. (2) Collected Ssaavs. p. 153. Orwell ±R quoting Edward Upward. 351. As Orweli points out, the author himself italiciaes <*at the present time" because 'he realises that one cannot, for instance, dismiss Hamlet on the ground that Shakespeare was not a Marxist.' Even the Narsist (and his Christicm counterpart) has enou^ sense to see that there is a close and direct connection between the artist and his environment, that he cannot choose the moment of his birth nor the society into which he is born, and that ho must of necessity, embody the attitudes and values of his own age, as well as his own reaction to them^ in any work whioh he produces. The recognition of a direct relation between a particular society and its artistic parOducts, places the ISarxist in a difficult position, for while he is bound to say that the latter is the direct result of the former^, he has to admit, at the same time, that ages of singular decadence (from the dialectical materialist's point of view) have somehow managed to produce works of indisputable greatness. (ihe Divine Comedy. The Canterbury Tales. King Lear). Few critiost without an extra-literary axe to grind, are willing to go as far as the Narsist in interpreting literature as the emanation of a historical social and political situation, and yot most have Jettisoned (l) Chrietophor Caudwoll. Illusion and Reality, pp. 59*60. 352. (thott^ not overtly) the idea of an * autonomous* world of art. It is taken for granted by critics of. art and cultural historians that there is a direct and unavoid• able relation between the art of a period and the complex combination of ideas, beliefs, and emotional attitudes which constitutes the *spirit of the age.* T.S* Eliot*8 maxim that the great poet *in writing hiioself, writes his time*^ goes largely unchallenged, thou^ Raymond Williams is at pains to point out that opeh acknowledgment of this kind of relation is of comparatively recent origini An essential hypothesis in the development of the idea of culture is that the art of a period is olosPly end necessarily related to the generally prevalent iway of life*, and further that, in consequence, aesthetic, moral and social Judgements are closely interrelated* Such a hypothesis is now so generally accepted, as a matter of intellectual habit, that it is not easy to remember that it is, essentially, a product of the « intelloptual history of the nineteenth century . Critics attach varying degrees of importance to the closeness of the artist to his age. H. V. Routh goes so far as to demand. that the artist embody- the * spirit of the age* in anything he produces emd suggests that he betrays his vocation if he does not. Uriting (1) •SUakespeare and the stoicism of Seneca*. Selected PBaaya, p. 137. (2) Culture and Society, p. 130. 353. about the ttfontleth oentttry he says This la the t»orld of humanistic Insight aiul selontlfle Imaglnatloni uhleh poets, ^ BiorallotSt and novel writers also must capture • F.R« Leavle Is less extravagant and attaches a far hl^er value to the poet's Individual Insist, but his statement In Wew Bearings In English Poetry that •oIf the poetry and the Intelligence of the age lose touch ivlth each other, poetry vlll oeaso to matter much, and , the age \3lll be lacking In fine awareness • sees the necessity for a close relation between art and Its Immediate environment« Nearly every modem critic of repute has considered this question of the relation of the art to Its age, and, hovover much they differ In their views on the exact nature of the relation of the artist to his time, they regard It as Inevitable that he should reflect and respond to the spirit of the age which has produced hlra. Hor Is this Interest In the relation between works of art and their historical environment confined to literary and art criticso Those scholars whose main concern Is with neither literature nor art, have made It quite clear that the understanding of any period of (1) Towards the Twentieth Century, p. 377. (2) Wew Bearings In English Poetrv. p. 20. 35^. history- depends» not only upon the osaialnatlpn of factual aoooonte and official docnmentss but also upon a serious consideration of conteEaporarjr imaginative creationso The historian espocially, cannot afford to ignore vorks of art for they *fi2 the historical moment. intentionally or not*^ in a ^ay in tfhich no other evidence can, ep that in discussing the art of an age, the historian finds hirasolf writing, not merely a history of art, but a history of a people. The Gorman historian Oswald Spongier illustrates this point to perfection in hie book The Decline of the ffest. Agreement Or disagreement tfith his thesis is not in question here, it is important only to notice that he treats all tforks of art in the Tfest as unambiguous embodiments of the 2 Paustian Zeitgeist • At the other end of the historical spectrum, the English historian David Thomson allotss the artist a far greater degree of personal freedom, but in no vay abandons the hypothesis that works of art are inestricably bound up with the period of history in which they are created I that the forms which they take are influenced by the political, social and economic conditions under which they were produced. In his detached accounts of (1) George Boas. The Heaven of Invention, p. 123. (2) The Deeline of the Ifest. pp. 259-295. 355. the history of modern Europe, he argues as Toynbee did a few years before^, that the iconoolasm, the experimontalisin and the revolutions in technique which . characterise modem art^ have a 'spiritual* cause, namely, the experience of religious and moral bewilderment and insecurity in an ago of increasing technological advancement, The culture of crisis suffered, naturally enou^, a crisj^of culture^ ^ But of all raodesm writers who have given their attention to this particular problem, it is probably T.S. Eliot who baa shown the deepest, though not necessarily the most consistent, understanding of the issues involved, and whose own poetry provides a demonstration of his perception that is more convincing than any of his arguments in prose. In the essay Shakespeare and the Stoieism of Seneca he writes (1) A Study of History, Vol. I., (abridged edition), pp* 258-259. *Our abandonment of our traditional artistic technique is manifestly the consequence of some kind of spiritual breakdown in our Vestem civilizationi and the cause of this breakdown evidently cannot be found in a phenomenon which is one of its results.* (p. 259). (2) Europe since ^Sapelppn, p. 868. 356. ^at every poet starts from Is his own emotionso And when we get down to these, there Is not much to choose between Shakespeare and Dante The great poet. In writing himself, writes hie time. Thus Dante, hardly knowing It, became the voice of the thirteenth centuryi Shakespeare hardly knowing It, became tho representative of the end of the sixteenth oentuxy, of a turning point In history. But you can hardly say that Dante believed, or did not believe, the Thomlst philosophy! you can hardly say that Shakespeare believed or did not believe, the mixed and muddled scepticism of the Renaissanceo Zf Shakespeare had written according to a better philosophy, he would have written worse poetryt It was his business to express the greatest emotional Intensity of his time. based on whatever his time happened to thlnk^. That there Is a great deal o^ truth In what Bllot Is saying here Is Indisputable. Be brilliantly confutes the efforts made &t turning creative works Into philosophical treatises or their ereators Into 'thinkers^, but In his antagonism to the 'historical* attitude In criticism he Overstates his case by oversimplifying the relationship between the 'thought* of an age end Its poetry. In tho first place, he, very strangely, suggests a severance of the connection between thou^t and feeling In tho poet*8 own sensibility. The poet Is prevented from having thoughts of his own, let alone from experiencing them In 2 ways which oould modify his whole, sensibility . Instead he Is reduced to a bundle of emotions to which he gives (1) Selected Essays, p. 137* (2) Ibid., p. 138. *Z doubt whether belief proper enters Into the activity of a great poet, qua poet*. 357. expression by adopting contemporary patterns of thought In much the same way as he might utilise a currently fashionable metrical system or rhyme scheme. The fact that there can be a fruitful Interaction between the poet*s thought and that of his age and that the result, felt *as Immediately as the odour of a rose*, could be the cause of poetry. Is overlooked. This Is the assumption of a position, for polemical reasons, which Eliot himself contradicts In the writing of his own poetry. In the second place, Dante, In The Divine Comedy. Is writing his time not merely because, as Bllot suggests, the poem*s philosophy corresponds exactly with the Thomlstlc system, but because he posaassdwhat Eliot, three years later praised Charles Baudelaire for possessing, and what he himself possesses in abundance - ci *8en8e of his age*^. In this later essay Eliot shows a far deeper under• standing of the relation of the poet to his historical environment* Here It is made clear that he Is rooted in the age Into which he is born without being limited to It. He Is seen In the double role of observer and visionary. The poetry of Baudelaire Is worthy of praise, not merely because it contains the expression of intense (l) Selected Essays, p. 420. 358. personal emetion in terms that were the most convenient to hand, nor because it presents an accurate picture of the intellectual and emotional atmosphere of mid-century Paris, but because it represents the poet's own response to his agej a response which causes him both to embody it and transcend it in his work. The inadequacy of Eliot*s earlier remarks on the relation- of the' artist to his age is pointed up when they are placed side by side with a passage on the same subject from the work of a man.is not concerned with art ^--^l. but with religion. If we study the portraits of Rembrandt, especially in the later period, we confront personalities who are like self-enclosed worlds «• strong, lonely, tragic but unbroken, carrying the works of their unique histories in every line of their faoes, expressing the ideals of personality of a humanistic Protestantism. To compare these portraits with Giotto's piotares of St. Francis and his monks is to recognise the difference between two worlds. Giottot^s Francis is the expression of a Divine Power by which man is .,.possessed and elevated beyond his individual character and personal experiences^. This is effective criticism because it enhances what the Observer of Rembrandt's and Giotto's paintings may only dimly have been aware of by relating it to a wider context - in this ease theology. It is an interesting ooinoldenoe that the painters under diisbussibh are (l) Quoted by Nathan A. Scott in Rehearsals of Diseomposure pp. 188-189. 359o almost exact contemporaries of Shakespeare and Dante, (it is true that Rembrandt*s life stretches well into the seventeenth century, but it Overlaps with Shakespeare*s by about twenty years). Tillich makes it clear that he regards the works of Rembrandt and Giotto as embodi• ments of two different theologies, and perhaps it is unfair to oompare his remarks with Eliot's, for Eliot is speaking specifically about the artist*s use of *philosophies*. But to separate the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas from his theology is an impossible task. So the logical conclusion of Eliot*s argument would be that the theology of St. Thomas is incidental to the writing of the Divine Comedy when clearly this is not the case, for the qualities which Tillich discerns in Giotto, are also the outstanding qualities of Dante. Both artists express, in their unique ways, the same theological emphas&s which,. far from being incidental to their work is at least partly, responsible for it. The conclusion to be drawn from this comparison is plains any work of art which expresses the religious sensibility of the artist, expresses also the religious sensibility of the age, for the artist cazmot fail to be profoundly affected by the prevailing theological atmosphere of his immediate environment. 360. It could be argued (but not with Justification in Tillich*s case) that this kind of delineation of the relationship between the work of art and its age denigrates the role of the artist. This is a danger towards which both historians.and theologians are tempted^. But the artist is not, as John Vain has recently remarked, in an article in TOie Observer. *the obsequious Oriel of the Seitgeist * . He does much more than embody the * feeling* of his age in his works. Reacting to this * feeling* with his personal vision he goes a long way to creating the Zeitgeist itself. John Press makes this point forcibly in a passage from his book The Fire and the Fountain. Nor have we the right to assume that poetry and the other arts passively reflect current events and preconceptions. Roger Fry warned us that the relationship between Art and. Life was.less simple than it appeared to be on the surface. Baroque art, we are told, may be regarded as the visible expression of Counter-Reformation piety, but it is equally legititaate to hold that this piety was partly induced by a contemplation of that Baroque art which oprang inevitably from the flowering of certain elements latent in the painting and in the architecture of the Italian Renaissance3. (1) Cf. Roger Lloyd. The Borderland, p. 38. (2) The moaning of Teats. The Observer. June I3 I965, p. 26. (3) p. 171. 361. it is true that an art as public as architecture has a far more immediate impact on the lives of men and women, and possibly a far greater power to modify the ways of thought and feeling - the sensibility - of a whole society, than arts, like poetry, which are becoming Increasingly 'private'. Press's argument however, still holds good, for the centrifugal tendencies of modem sooloty have not yet forced the arts into a position of ^ -» V. complete Isolation from their environment. But tho complexity of modern life has made the interdependence of the various strands which make up the cultural pattern less obvious than it has ever been, and difficult problems are raised when any effort is made at relating the. work of an artist to his environment. It has been part of the purpose of this study to deal with some of the problems in the course of an examination of the Christian doctrine in the poetry of T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden. I have already tried to show that a condition of all art is an ihtlmate connection with its age. That there is a close relation between the work of Eliot and Auden and.the attitudes, values and events, even, of the twisntleth century Is indisputable. But they are both avowedly Christian poets, and the investigation has been Conoemed primarily with their relation to the complex set of beliefs, attitudes and 362, feelings which constitute the specifically religious sensibility of the age. I have already tried to indicate that the word * sensibility*, however difficult to use with precision, is one whioh has real denotation, and that the concept of a cultural sensibility at any given point in the history of the world, is not a meaningless one. The belief that sensibility can be apprehended objectively has been the pre-supposition of nearly all historical thinking in the West. 'Hie use of the word * civilisation* and the aoceptanoe of the division of the time sequence into, historically identifiable periods assumes that there are, to greater or lesser degrees, real structures of Colleetive feeling and thought to be known and recognised. Persian ascendancy in the Middle East at the time of Darius, for example, is recognised as being different from its Babylonian predecessor for reasons much more far-reaching than that of a change of personages in the ranks of the rulers i Just as a real difference in sensibility separatee the Dark Ages from the years of the Reformation. It would be silly to lay down lines of Clear demarcation in history, for, obviously, each period grows out of that which precedes it and is responsible for that which follows it, but differences are, nonetheless, real. At times changes occur gradually, as over the period in European history 363. between the reign of Chariemagme and that of t^illlam the Conqueror, At other times, as In the century which separates 1950 from 1850 the change appears to have taken place rapidly. But however change occurs, and however misleading the practice of 'categorising* may be, It is possible to observe the ways in which stmctures of thought and feeling take shape over any given period. And 80 It is possible to discern some of the outlines of the sensibility of the twentieth century as it grows out of, and stands in contrast to, that of the lattor half of the nineteenth century. The main concern of this study Is the religious sensibility of the last half-century, but it will be seen that the developments in the theological field frequently mirror the events and attitudes that form the whole pattern of cultural activity in the Vest. Unfortunately, the attempt to outline the religious sensibility of the twentieth century is faced by difficulties at the outset, ^e first is raised, by our own proximity to, not to say Involvement in, the life and attitudes we are trying to apprehend. This proximity may add colour or originality to the picture that is presented, but It prevents the achievement of r that objectivity and coherence which can be obtained from the examination of a period with which we have no direct 36k. physical connection and o&A know only by way of the second-hand experience of contemporary *documentation*. There is a further difficulty which is inherent in the period itselft the absence of obvious cultural unity in the twentieth century. Although it is still possible to say, for example, that one cannot understand the religious or social or political sensibilities of the century without reference to the ways in whioh the whole pattiara of life has changed, it is undeniable that the dominant movements are centrifugal ones. An essay like CP. Snow*s 'The Two'Cultures* however inaccurate, could not have been produced in a period other than the present. In his book The Condition of Man published towards the end of the Second Vorld Var, Lewis Mumford complains Henry Adaiais was right i the Icist thirty years A have been witnessing the active disintegration of tfestern oiviliaation^. It has become commonplace to'remark on the disintegrating forces of the Hestem Vorld, and Elumford is only one of hundreds of spokesmen frOia every occupation and station in soiBiety to observe this fact. Nearly every work of literary and dramatic criticism which tries to place oreative works in their cultural context must take the word ^disintegration' as a keyoconcept for.the understanding (1) p. 391. 365. of modern artistic expression. Nathan Ai Scott entitles his study of modem poetry Rehearsals of Diseoroposurei G.$. Praser»s The, Modem ^riter. and Hie World confidently asserts that Yoats, JToyoe^ Eliot ^ Auden, Spender» Day Lewis and HaoNeice all show themselves aware of living in a period of peculiar crisis^. Safka's heroes have become^ for Fraeer, types of modern experience(> JiRi Cohen In Poetry of This Age refers to the present period as an age of 'anxiety^ of analysis, unease and catastrophe* • Cleanth Brooks in Tho Hidden QS&i quotes Burton Roscoe's Judgment on The ITaste Land it gives voice to the universal despair or resignation arising from the spiritual and economic consequences of the war, the cross- purposes of modem civillaatlon3. as a result, the situation has arisen in which 'disintegration' Itself and its consequences, anxiety, bewilderment, fear have beeome recognisable, and probably definitive features of the modern sensibility. In the year following the publication of Numford's book, 19^59 T-S. Eliot eontrlbuted an essay to a volume (1) Fraser^ pp^ 15-17o (2) Cohen, p« 26/ (3) Brooks, p* 69* Cf. also Stephen Spender. The Struggle of the Modem, pp. 20-239 and A.C. Ward. The Nineteen-Twentlea. Ch. I, 'A Decade of Despair', pp. 1*17. 366. edited by the sociologist Maurice B. Reekitt, which re• inforced what Humford said from a different angle^. To anyone familiar with yhjs Sacred Uoed. yor Lancelot Andrewes. The Idea of a Christian Society, or any of the early critical essays. Cultural Forces in the Human Order will present little that is new, but it is a clear definition of the basis upon which much Of his earlier work is produced. He makes explicit his belief in the total dependence of human beings upon each other and upon society which is conceived of as an organic entity, and in lamenting the decline & of the Uest he describes a kind of 'dissociation of sensibility' which is the inevitable by-product of the complex hl^ly-sophisticated civilisation which has evolved in the Vest. Ro casts an eye back to a primitive society in which the several strands of cultural activity were 'inextricably woven' together in a single purposeful action The Dyak who spends the better part of a season shaping, carving, and painting his barque of the peculiar design required for. the annual ritual of head-hunting, is exercising several cultural .aetivities at once - artistic, religious, and military^. (1) The essay was subsequently revised, without substantial alteration, and reprinted three years later as the first chapter of Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. (2) Prospect for Christendom, p. 59, 367. Eliot's main Concern is with the separation of the religious and artistic sensibilities, euid his own work, taken V as a whole oan be regarded as an attempt to unite these two modes of man's experience. He speaks, primarily, of the dissociation of sensibility within the individual, but he makes it clear that this is connected with the disintegration of society as a whole and the increasing isolation of the individual in the group. Vh&t he does not go on to argue, is that this, in turn, gives rise to dissooiation within the artistic, religious, political sensibilities themselves. This is what medces the task at hand peculiarly difficult. The religious sensibility Of Western Europe can be said to have evinced no unity since the later Middle Ages and the breaking up of the Catholic community. Moreover, the divisions between the various interpretations of the Christian gospel have given every appearance of becoming hairder and faster as the centuries since the sixteenth have passed, so that it Could be argued that these differences between the Churches of the Vest preclude any realistic discussion about the religious sensibility of the twentieth century at all. This argument does contain an element of truth, but in the last resort, fails to convince. Although it is too early to Judge the 368. meaning of the so-called Ecumenical Movement of the Chris- :-6lan churches, it could be said, with Justification, that the efforts at rerintegrating the separate ecolesiastieal communities is the outcome, in the face of many external pressures, of the discovery that there is a unified religious sensibility. Pragmatically, moreover, the fact remains that the Christian of the nlneteen- thirties or nineteen-forties, whatever his ecclesiastical traditionydiffers profoundly in his view of the world, from his Victorian grandparent. Certain theological movements, contain prominent scholars, and, more Important, certain pressures from the secular world, have forced a change in the structures of thought and feeling which go to create the religious sensibility of this century. This conviction underlies the statement made by Eliot in 1939 when he otktlined his political theories in The Idea of a Christian Society The attitudes and beliefs of Liberalism are destined to disappear, are already disappearing. They belong to an age of free exploitation which has passed••.••^ And it lies behind the whole of Norman Nicholson's argument about the nature of modern poetry and art in his book Man and Literature (1) p. 18. 369. A8 against those two pagan or romantic doctrines, Z see the classical and Christian conception of Ueku re-emerging in literature ...... It seems to me very significant, therefore, that such important wlters as Eliot and Joyce, and so many of the younger men, should be reasserting a view of Man which is in strong contradiction to that held by those who have been a dominant influence in the literature of the earlier years of this century^. Both Eliot and Nicholson characterise the modern sensibility as anti-romantic and anti-liberal, and, although Bliot surveys the whole cultural scene, both men write out of the consciousness of persons whose primary concern is literature. IJhatever the validity of their view in the literary and cultural sphere, it is beyond doubt that in the theological world a revolution, or rather reaction, very like the one they describe was taking place in the second and third decades of this century. By 1930 theological liberalism was virtually dead. A.R. Vidler, an authority on the.Liberal Movement, oxplains the failure of nineteenth century liberal attitudes and the consequent reaction to them, in his by no means unsympathetic, book. The Church in an Age of Revolution. The ironlties of international hatred and the horrors and sufferings of gigantic wars had much to (1) p. 5. 370, do with the breakdoi^n of liberal theology and the foxmatibn of the new sensibility. In the first places there was the catastrophe of the First Iforld Vav, which dealt a deadly blot? to the idea of inevitable progress through intelleetual enlightenment and caoral endeavour • • Had the Church no message from beyond the reach of human reason, no revelation from on high which it must witness to and interpret, no goal to proelaioi other than the refinements of , bourgeois society? The Liberal Theology in its various forms, which, as we have seen, had been more and more in the ascendant, seemed to have little to say to the agonising questions that the breakdown of civilisation drove home^. in the face of the welter of meaningless suffering and tragically foolish destruction men abemdonod belief that the realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth could be achieved by the living of the decent moral life. In the somewhat harsh words of B. Richard Niebuhr, a Ood without wrath, bringing man without sin into a kingdom without Judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a oross^ oould hardly avail men for whom suffering and madness had become keynotes of contemporary existence. In literature, the dimension of hell, which was largely omitted from the universe of the Georgians, was (1) Pelican History of the Church. Vol, V, p. 212. (2) Quoted by Vidler, p. 213. 371. being restored by the vision of Eliot. In theology it would not be an exaggeration to say that the knell of Liberal theology was souiided first decisively by the Swiss theologian Karl Berth whoso first book Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans appearing one year after the publication of Eliot's first volume of poems, *fall like a bomb on the playground of the theologians*^. The importance of Earth * s thought for the whole of the Christian world in the tfest can hardly be over• emphasised*. It cannot be said that he has caused any single Communion to change their doctrines but he has caused each one to reconsider their beliefs and frequently to re-interpret the existing structures in terms of the new insight which ho had produced. Vidler remarkst On all hands he has been recognised as the greatest theologian of his time, and it is striking that many Roman Catholics have regarded him as such and have sought to engage with his thought^. In his own survey of the religious thought of the twentieth century J. f^acquarrie speaks of the habit of dating the 'revolution in theology* from the publication of Earth's.eomraentazy, and says, in words similar to (1) Vidler, p. 217. (2) Ibid., pp. 216-217. 372. Vidler*8 By far the most outstanding of the theologians we have to consider, and probably the most famous Protestant theologian of the twentieth century so far, is Sari Barth (1886- f. It is important to see that hie influence estonds far beyond his own disciples and the Calvinist churches with which his own Swiss community was connected. The Roman Catholic historian, S.S. Latourelte, in the fourth volume of his series Christianity in a Revolutionarv Age. endorsee tho opinions of Vidler and Ulacquarrie and indieates the extensiveness of the treatment of Barth *8 work by Roman Catholic theologians The most widely recognised Swiss theologian of the post-191^ decades was Sari Barth (I886- ). Xt is no exaggeration to say that Barth was the most influential Protestant theologian after Sohleiermacher. He was generally esteemed as the outstanding figure in what was variously called the theology of crisis, dialectic theology, or neo-orthodoxy^. Since 19I8 Barth has expended a great deal of effort in constructing, like Thomas Aquinas, a theology which is systematic and entirely self-consistent. Granted his presuppositions his conclusions are irrefutable, and those presuppositions grow out of the conviction which tmderlie his very first publications1 the failure of Liberal Theology to provide any significant answer to tlj Twentjleth Century Religioua Thought, p. 32I. (2) p. 358. 373. the problems of a disintegrating culture. In consequence thiare' iis an insistence upon the frailty and helplessness of man* on the absolute sovereignty of God, on the necessity for redemption solely by grade, and on the futility of any human effort. His intense antipathy to, his own early liberal training can best be observed in the way he constantly returns to the nation of the j destruction of the image of God in man, and the seriousness of Original Sin^. In a sense the whole of neo-orthodos theology can be seen in terms of the re-discovery, and frequently extreme interpretations, of the doctrine of Original Sin. It would be a mlsteike to create a picture of Barth as a solitary prophet, wielding unaided, all the power required to alter the religious sensibility of the Christian world. Many of his contemporaries were beginning to grasp similar ideas, and his admirers were responsible for disseminating his extreme pronouncements, in a modulated form, throughout Europe. It is always difficult, in the theological disciplines, to apportion debt and influence because so much theology is the re• statement and re-eomraunication of doctrines which have (l) Cf. Dogmatics in Outline, pp. lli»-120. 37^. been lost^ and Barth would be the first to admit that he was merely recovering the meaning of an ancient truth which had been obscured for centuries; Nonetheless, whether directly or indirectly^ he provided much of the driving force behind that pattern of religious thought known as the 'theology of oriels', and it is only in a clieiate created by the shattering events of the First World ^ar and the insights of 'crisis' theologians that men so completely different from Barth as the German Roman Catholic Romano Guardinl and the Franco-Russian Nicolas Berdyaev could produce books like The End of the Modem World, and Th& Destiny of Man^i books which annihilate the optimistic attitudes of earlier decades, emphasise the radical instability of human life, and the 'critical' nature of every decision and action. It is importcmt also, to see that this 'theology of crisis' does not spring to lif® fully - araed in the second and third decades of this century, and that behind the labours of theologians like Barth, Tillieh, Guarclini and Berdyaev there are those of the nineteenth century Kierkegaard whom Vidler describes as one born 2 before his due time . There is no need to rehearse the (1) Published in 1937 and 193? respectively. (2) The Church in an Aae of Revolution, p. 201. 375. main aspiacts of his thought again, it is sufficient to say that it was he, who in a liberal and progressive age, emphasised the belief that guilt and sin, despair and death were the fundamental and inescapable facts of man's existence I that good work and reasonable behaviour could never lead to salvation} that there was an infinite qualitative difference between man and God a gap bridged only in the person of the God/man Jesus Christ, and that the achieving of salvation for the individual depended upon his Irrational 'leap of faith^ >- the abandonment of the whole personality on God. Kierkegaard was a Lutheran and Barth a Calvinistt consequently the differences between them are many, and sometimes radical, but they are at one in their conviction of the helpless• ness of man and the 'critical' nature of his existence. Kierkegaard has often been considered not only as the source of the 'theology of crisis* but as the progenitor of 'existentialism'. This latter relation must not be pressed too far, but the connection between Kierkegaard's attitudes and modem secular existentialist thought is indisputable} and significant, for it emphasises the fact that the new religious sensibility which was being forged in the 'twenties and *thirties was not divorced from the secular developments of the modem world. It 376. was Kierkegaard's work which brought the word *crisis* into prominence, and it is this word which has become the oine to the understanding of most of the cultural structures of this epoch^o Religious thought and attitudes beoorao then an important part of the changing pattern of sensibility in the first few decades of the century. Sliot*8 place in this cultural pattern is not difficult to define, although in some aspects it is ambiguous. He embodies in his person and his work the connection between the specifically religious sensibility and that of the total culture of which it is a part. Although not as brash and outspoken as T.E. Hulme, he portrays no. less strongly the growing disillusionment with belief in the nobility of man, the value of his institutions, and his. progress towards happiness and perfection. On the contrary, for Bliot the reverse procedure seemed to be taking place. Romano Ouardini, in the course of a discussion on the place of twentieth. century man in society comments on the dehumanisation of the individual6 (l) Cf• David ThomB.cn, BuropO since Hapoleoia, p. 868 ff. 377. With the loss of personality comes the steady fading away of that sense of uniqueness with which man had onoe viewed his own existence It is taken increasingly for^ granted that man ought to be treated as an object . Guardini's lecture was delivered in 1950 and ho is doing little moire than re-emphasise what has become a truism. Yet as early as 1917 Eliot had produced a volume containing poems like Preludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night which conveyed this loss of uniqueness and the sense of degradation which inevitably followed. Auden is far less sensitive to this feature of contemporary existence than Eliot. The anxiety which characterises the lives of his human beings makes them Intensely and feverishly aware of their separate existences, so that 2 apart from the amusing flourish of The Unknown Citiagen and i a speetfi by the Narrator from A Christmas Oratorio in which he formally acknowledges dehuraanisation as the result of Original Sin^, the theme goes virtually untbuohed. In Pooma 1920. and Sweeney Agonistes and Murder in the Cathedral, as I have already tried to show, Bliot furthers his vision of the dehumanisation of (1) The End of the Modem World, p. 79. (2) Another Time, PP. 96-97* (3) For the Time Being, p. 124. Remembering the stable where for onoe in our lives Everything became a 7ou and nothing was an It. 378. humanity by the introduction qf the themes of violence and the use of animal imagery. Zn so doing he forges another llaik between himself and the neo-orthodox theologians for whom the destruction of the image of Ood in maxi entailed, not merely the loss of supernatural virtue but the lapse from the natural state to the unnatural* Strangely enou^, it IS' in his pre-Christian poems that Eliot shows himself most alive to the religious senaibility of his own age. Zt is in the early volumes that his delineation of the condition of man has most in common with neo-orthodox theologies. Vidler, in one 6f his most perceptive comments on Barth *8 thou^t said Men would never come to bear the authentic ^ord of the true Ood till they had acknowledged their own plight} till they had discovered that all their last questions were unanswerable questions, and that all the alleys they went down in their enlighteximent, including the alley of religion, proved to be blind alleys. Zt was only the blind, and those who knew themselves to be blind0 who oould receive their sight^. The extraordinary feature of this summary is its applicability to the early work of Bliot. Allowing for a few modifications, it oould easily operate as a free commentary on a poem like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrbck. Vidler *s remarks help to point up the (1) The Church in an Age of Revolution, p. 215. 379. similarity of the ways in which the two men faced the human situation at the beginning of the century. They both had the same vision of a disintegrating world order and shared the same disillusionment with human endeavour. They both despaired of man's blindness and deafness, the futility of his searohings, and the fatuousness of his social activities. But, as has already been pointed out, the similarity is a negative one only, for having demolished the optimism of an earlier generation, they proceeded to construct schemes of salvation whieh differed greatly, and, interestingly enou^, both, to a certain extent, began to separate themselves from a sensibility which they had helped to form. Underlying nearly all the critical evaluations of Eliot's work is the asaumption that he is the great Christian poet of the age* Zi has been my intention to show, however great he may be as a poet, his Christian vision is seriously incomplete and that his relation to the specifically religious sensibility of the century is not nearly as dull as has been imagined. Coincidentally, it was at about the same time that Auden began to direct his energies to the serious writing of poetry, that Eliot started to lose tlst 'closeness to his age' for which 380. he had been famous^. Auden somehow picked up where Eliot had left off. Just as many lesser theologians picked up where Barth left off. Zn a real sense these men inherited situations which their two masters had created. And old enough to be aacounted as belonging to the same generation and to have had first-hand knowledge of the revolutions of the Xmagists and dialectical theologians, they were not old enough to have played active parts in these movements. The romanticism and liberalism of the previous century had, to a large extent, been swept away before the men of the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties came to maturity. Their task seemed at first an obvious one; they were free to reconstruct in all spheres of cultural activity. For this reason many biacame communists convincing themselves of the reality of a new world-order. Auden, however, never Joined the Communist Party and with his crypto-religions attitudes oould never bring himself to believe in this new societyt his insistence upon the weakness and imperfeotibility of man in all his early work demonstrates his feelings. But those who espoused the efforts at reconstruction (l) Cf. P.R. Leavie, Mew Bearings in English Poetry. p. 67. 381. found themselves in an ambiguous position, for the world was so obviously one in whioh the forces of disintegration, instability, suffering, and bewilderment could hardly be stemmed, and could only be ignored with peculiar obstinacy. AOAQXI did not suffer from this kind of blind- nei^s, and his proximity to the sensibility of his age is as marked in religious matters as it is in social, political, and economic affairs. In dlsoussing the religibtxs ideas of Bliot and Auden, I have tended to centre the argument on the way in which each has presented the doctrines of Original Sin, the Incarnation and the Atonement. This has been both deliberate and inevitable in that Christianity, which is a religion revolving around man's estrangement from God and his reoonoiliation to Him in the person of the Inqarhate God, Josus Christ, has these specific doctrines at its core. Differenoea in religious sensibility are thus nearly always governed by the ways in whioh those doctrines are interpreted and emphasised. The sensibility of our own ago has been defined by the reaction to the optimistic anthropo- eentrism of theological liberalism and the consequent heavy stress upon the doctrine of Original Sin. Both Eliot and Audon have deeply aware of this, but it is Auden who has more consistently embodied the existentialism 382. Of the modem climate. Eliot's belief about the nature of man, complex as it is, and identical in many respects with classical Christian formulations, has been bound up with the metaphysical problems of Time and Reality, which, though fundamental to the construction of a Christian philosophy, are nonetheless peripheral to the theological pre-oooupations of this centusy. Kierkegaard, mere than a century ago, had begun to dismiss, in the strongest possible terms, attempts at philosophical synthesis in Christianity, and to insist upon the importance of the * existential* attitude i the immediate spiritual and emotional response of each individual to the conditions in whieh he found himself. He was followed in this by the numerous philosophers who refused to oonstruct or embrace any kind of metaphysical system, and by the neo-orthodox theologians for whom Natural Theology (as opposed to the Or Arbitrary Revelaxtion of the Divine ?ord} was anathema. Auden is not a Barthdan, nor ultimately a disciple of Kierkegaard, but he has imbibed the attitudes which have percolated into Western European philosophical and religious traditions, and in his poetry has concentrated, far more than Bliot, upon the immediate psychological and spiritual problems of the individual! his guilt and 383. fmstration, his bewilderment, conflict and tension. At the risk of over-simplifying, it would bo possible to say that for Eliot the resolution of the problems occurs when the philosppbijaal pattern is perceived, whereas for Auden, resolution is an immediate experience which cireates its own pattern. The differences betT«een the two poets become clearer when the issues of the Incamation and the Atonement are approached, euid here we find that Eliot's failure to inoorporate the dootrine of the Atonement into the vision from which his finest poetry springs is intimately connected with his divergence in the nineteen- thirties from the peculiar structures of thought and feeling which characterise the first half of this century. In 19^9 the Bishop of Oxford K.B. Kirk in a leoture entitled The Coherenoe of Christian Dootrine ohose to discuss the whole stracture of Christian theology in terms of the Incarnation and the Atonement and remarked What is incontestable is that by the end of the nineteenth century attention was focussed upon the Incarnation, and the Atonement had slipped into relative oblivion^* (l) The Charles Gore I^emorial Foundation Lecture. 19^9* p. 8. 36k. tfith their profound interest in the person of Jesus of Nazareth as a historical figuret a teacher and a leader, the nineteenth century liberals had given little energy to considering the nature of his suffering and death. Saorifice seemed to be irrelevant in the lives of men who could achieve beatitude by following the example of a holy Haster* The theologians of the following generation, with their disillusionment about man*s goodness, their renewed emphasis on Original Sin and the oorruption of the world, inevitably placed the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ at the centre of the Christian*s vision of salvation. %-aA J.K. Mosley in hie survey of modem British theology quotes the Bishop of Derby announcing in 1937 ia a charge to the olergy of his diocese that he was *profoundly eneouraged by the manifold signs which are all about us, in the world of modern theology of a fresh, constructive and positive grasp of the essential Gospel of Christianity, and of a renewed apprehension and understanding of the ancient doctrines of Sin, and of Atonement, and of Redemption* . (1) Some Tendenoies in British Theology, p* 60« 385. Xt la significant that Eliot, vlth all the profound insights into the meaning of corruption in the tuo earl;^ volusies of poems, should turn avay from the Death of Christ and place the Znoamation at the centre of his specifically religious poems. Once again it is possible to see the vays in t^hioh his presentation of the Ohristian faith is shaped by the particular philosophical problems t^ith %7hich he t^as pre-ocoupied • Christ is seen as the eruption of the Stomal in Time, the Saviour of men bound to a time sequence which has no meaning. Incarnation is that t^hioh gives meaning to the sequence and reality to the lives involved in it. It is almost inevitable that xte should. be reminded again of the words of Niebuhr who* endeavouring to espress the typically religious sensibility of tho age, maintains that the basic issue with which tho Christian is confronted is not the fittiteness of man but his sint not his Involvement in the fins of nature but his abortive attempts to escape that flux. The issue of Siblical religion is not primarily the problem of how finite nianrcdnrkiDTr Qod, but how sixiful man is to be reconciled to God. Auden*6 religion could never be called 'Biblical* in the sense in which Hiebuhr would use the word, any more than it is Kierkegaardian or Barthian, but he displays that concern with what Niebuhr calls (basic issues* in 386. nearljr evexy serious poem he -vrites. In the early poems the religious dimension is Implicit but in the later vorkt as in the poems vhieh constitute Horae Canonioae. the complete picture of hie ovn beliefs emerges • The cycle does not bear comparison «ith Sllpt's Pour Quartets in range of imaginative pover or depth of perception or feeling. Auden*s poems are clearly inferior to Eliot*s. And yet there is a satisfactory apprehension of the Christian faith tfhich Bliot's vovk lacks. Zn Herae Canon!cae Auden shows his ability to embody the religious Zeitgeist of the twentieth century and to transcend the limitations of his time. The Atonement is at the centre of his vision of the world, for the Crucifixion is the pivotal point of the poems. Here the specifically sacrificial nature of Christ's life and work is related to the frustrations and guilt of men in every hour and activity of their lives. This is the 'courageous existentialism* that the modern religious spirit demands. Auden*s Christian apprehension is wider than Bliot*s at this point, but it is wider too than the demands made by Kierkegaard and neo-orthodosy, for Auden, like Bliot, is part of a tradition which, at it s best, refuses to accept the ultimate separation of philosophy and faith, the 387. * infinite qualitative difference between Ood and man^ and stresses consistently^ in its worship, the Importance of the Incarnation. It is true, in his poetry, that the doctrine of the Atonement is the cardinal feature.of his Christianity, for his direct treatment of the Incarnation is, as in A Christmas, Oratorio, is only partially suooessful. ITet, as X have tried to show, when dealt with obliquely, as the indispensable substructure to the work of reodnciliatiou, the meaning of the Incarnation is really understood and imaginatively conveyed. The American critic Amos Wilder remarks, in his discussion of what he regards as prominent features of modern culture The flight from disintegration and rootlessness, finally takes a third form in a return to tradition. Here'we have a return to absolutes that are defined by history. Thus we have the neo-orthodoxios of various schools. Among these, noo-humanism has the greatest difficulty in lifting its voice Xt starts with the hfandicap of little knowledge from the inside of the forces of todays and it lacks an adequate philosophy. Either it represents only an aesthetic eclecticism or, if it appeals to the philosophia perennisi it too evidently stops short of the authoritative appeal of either Aquinas or Calvin^, (l) Modem Poetry and the Christian Spirit, p. 66. 388. Auden occupies a peculiar position in this cultural scene, He has undoubtedly returned to tradition. An Anglo- Catholic, like Bliot, he is deeply aware of his incorporation into the divine community, and is willing, as Spender has remarked^, to submit himself as an Individual to its authoritative Judgment. At the same time he manages to convey the attitude of the humanist and the dialectical theologian. Because of the increasingly jn^jersca aL: tone of his poems and his ability to assume any *poetlc* mask he chooses ho of ton appears chameleon-like in his adaptability. But at his best, he manages to nxiite in a single imaginative structure a Christian vision which combines the appeal to both Aquinas and Calvin (in their neo-orthodos mode) which is deeply humanistic and distinctly personal. (l) World Uithin Iforld. p. 299. 389. BiBLIOORAPHy In the test books are referred to by their titles, Details of date and place of publication can be found in the Bibliography. SECTIOH A T. 8. ELIOT'S mms Poetryt Collected Poems. 1909^1935. London. 1954. (Fifteenth Impres- sion) Pour Quartets. 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